
HEROES 
OF THE 
MIDDLE 
WEST* 



iitmniiiiilHi 



tt 




!^nd COPY, 

1893- 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

ChapZlT.^opyright No 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



HEROES OF THE MIDDLE WEST 




COUNT FRONTENAC. 
From a Statue at Quebec. 



HEROES OF THE 
MIDDLE WEST 

XTbe jfrencb 



MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 
GINN AND COMPANY 

1898 



r-s^^ 



e.^^ 



20876 



Copyright, 189« 
By MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 







PEEFAOE. 



Let any one who thinks it an easy task 
attempt to cover the French discovery and occu- 
pation of the middle west, from Marquette and 
Jolliet to the pulling down of the French flag 
on Fort Chartres, vivifying men, and while con- 
densing events, putting a moving picture before 
the eye. Let him prepare this picture for young 
minds accustomed Only to the modern aspect of 
things and demanding a light, sure touch. Let 
him gather his material — as I have done — from 
Parkman, Shea, Joutel, Hennepin, St. Cosme, 
Monette, Winsor, Eoosevelt — from state records, 
and local traditions richer and oftener more reli- 
able than history; and let him hang over his 
theme with brooding affection, moulding and re- 
moulding its forms. He will find the task he so 
lightly set himself a terribly hard and exhausting 
one, and will appreciate as he never before appre- 
ciated the labors of those who work in historic 
fields. 



CONTENTS. 



I. The Discoverers of the Upper Mississippi 

II. Bearers of the Calumet 

III. The Man with the Copper Hand 

IV. The Undespairing Norman 
V. French Settlements 

VI. The Last Great Indian . 



page 
1 

19 

44 

71 

102 

117 



HEROES OF THE MIDDLE WEST. 



3j^C 



THE DISCOVERERS OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI. 

The 17th of May, 1673, Father Jacques 
Marquette, the missionary priest of St. Ignace, 
on what is now called the north shore of Michi- 
gan, and Louis Jolliet, a trader from Montreal, 
set out on a journey together. 

Huron and Ottawa Indians, with the priest 
left in charge of them, stood on the beach to 
see Marquette embark, — the water running up 
to their feet and receding with the everlasting 
wash of the straits. Behind them the shore 
line of St. Ignace was bent like a long bow. 
Northward, beyond the end of the bow, a rock 
rose in the air as tall as a castle. But very 
humble was the small mission station which 
Father Marquette had founded when driven 
with his flock from his post on the Upper 
Lakes by the Iroquois. A chapel of strong 
1 



2 Heroes of the Middle West. 

cedar posts covered with bark, his own hut, 
and the lodges of his people were all surrounded 
by pointed palisades. Opposite St. Ignace, 
across a league or so of water, rose the turtle- 
shaped back of Michilimackinac Island, vener- 
ated by the tribes, in spite of their religious 
teaching, as a home of mysterious giant fairies 
who made gurgling noises in the rocks along 
the beach or floated vast and cloud-like through 
high pine forests. The evergreens on Michili- 
mackinac showed as if newborn through the 
haze of undefined deciduous trees, for it was 
May weather, which means that the northern 
world had not yet leaped into sudden and glori- 
ous summer. Though the straits glittered under 
a cloudless sky, a chill lingered in the wind, 
and only the basking stone ledges reflected 
warmth. The clear elastic air was such a per- 
fect medium of sight that it allowed the eye to 
distinguish open beach rims from massed for- 
ests two or three leagues away on the south 
shore, and seemed to bring within stone's throw 
those nearer islands now called Round and Bois 
Blanc. 

It must have wrung Marquette's heart to leave 
this region, which has an irresistible chai-m for 
all who come within its horizon. But he had 



The Discoverers of the Upper Mississippi. 3 



long desired to undertake this journey for a 
double purpose. He wanted to carry his reli- 
gion as far as possible among strange tribes, 
and he wanted to find and explore that great 
river of the west, about which adventurers in 
the New World heard so much, but which none 
had seen. 

A century earlier, its channel southward had 
really been taken possession of by the Spaniards, 
its first discoverers. But they 
made no use of their discovery, 
and on their maps traced it as 
an insignificant stream. The 
French did not know whether 
this river flowed into the Gulf 
of California — which was 
called the Red Sea — or to the 
western ocean, or through Vir- 
ginia eastward. Illinois In- 
dians, visiting Marquette's 
mission after the manner of 
roving tribes, described the 
father of waters and its tribu- 
taries. Count Frontenac, the governor of 
Canada, thought the matter of sufficient im- 
portance to send Louis Jolliet with an outfit to 
join the missionary in searching for the stream. 




Totem of the Illinois. 



4 Heroes of the Middle West. 

The explorers took with them a party of five 
men. Their canoes, we are told, were of birch 
bark and cedar splints, the ribs being shaped 
from spruce roots. Covered with the pitch of 
yellow pine, and light enough to be carried on 
the shoulders of four men across portages, these 
canoes yet had toughness equal to any river 
voyage. They were provisioned with smoked 
meat and Indian corn. Shoved clear of the 
beach, they shot out on the blue water to the 
dip of paddles. Marquette waved his adieu. 
His Indians, remembering the dangers of that 
southern country, scarcely hoped to see him 
again. Marquette, though a young man, was 
of no such sturdy build as Jolliet. Among de- 
scendants of the Ottawas you may still hear 
the tradition that he had a "white face, and 
long hair the color of the sun " flowing to the 
shoulders of his black robe. 

The watching figures dwindled, as did the 
palisaded settlement. Hugging the shore, the 
canoes entered Lake Michigan, or, as it was then 
called, the Lake of the Illinois. All the islands 
behind seemed to meet and intermingle and to 
cover themselves with blue haze as they went 
down on the water. Priest and trader, their 
skins moist with the breath of the lake, each in 



The Discoverers of the Uijper Mississippi. 5 

his own canoe, faced silently the unknown world 
toward which they were venturing. The shaggy 
coast line bristled with evergreens, and though 
rocky, it was low, unlike the white cliffs of 
Michilimackinac. 

Marquette had made a map from the descrip- 
tions of the Illinois Indians. The canoes were 
moving westward on the course indicated by 
his map. He was peculiarly gifted as a mis- 
sionary, for already he spoke six Indian lan- 
guages, and readily adapted himself to any 
dialect. Marquette, the records tell us, came 
of " an old and honorable family of Laon," in 
northern France. Century after century the 
Marquettes bore high honors in Laon, and their 
armorial bearings commemorated devotion to 
the king in distress. In our own Revolution- 
ary War it is said that three Marquettes fought 
for us with La Fayette. No young man of his 
time had a pleasanter or easier life offered him 
at home than Jacques Marquette. But he chose 
to devote himself to missionary labor in the 
New World, and had already helped to found 
three missions, enduring much hardship. Indian 
half-breeds, at what is now called the " Soo," 
on St. Mary's River, betwixt Lake Huron and 
Lake Superior, have a tradition that Father Mar- 



6 Heroes of the Middle West. 

quette and Father Dablon built their missionary 
station on a tiny island of rocks, not more than 
two canoe lengths from shore, on the American 
side. But men who have written books declare 
it was on the bank below the rapids. 

Jolliet had come of different though not less 
worthy stock. He was Canadian born, the son 
of a wagon-maker in Quebec ; and he had been 




Autograph of Jolliet, 

well educated, and possessed an active, adven- 
turous mind. He was dressed for this expedi- 
tion in the tough buckskin hunting suit which 
frontiersmen then wore. But Marquette re- 
tained the long black cassock of the priest. 
Their five voyageurs — or trained woodsmen — 
in more or less stained buckskin and caps of 
fur, sent the canoes shooting over the water 
with scarcely a sound, dipping a paddle now on 
this side and now on that, Indian fashion ; Mar- 
quette and Jolliet taking turns with them as the 



The Discoverers of the Upper Mississip)pi. 7 

day progressed. For any man, whether voy- 
ageur, priest, or seignior, who did not know how 
to paddle a canoe, if occasion demanded, was at 
sore disadvantage in the New World. 

The first day of any journey, before one meets 
weariness or anxiety and disappointment, re- 
mains always the freshest in memory. When 
the sun went down, leaving violet shadow^s on 
the chill lake, they drew their boats on shore ; 
and Pierre Porteret and another Frenchman, 
named Jacques, gathered driftwood to make a 
fire, w^hile the rest of the crew unpacked the 
cargo. They turned each canoe on its side, 
propping the ends with sticks driven into the 
ground, thus making canopies like half-roofs to 
shelter them for the night. 

" The Sieur Jolliet says it is not always that 
we may light a camp-fire,'* said Pierre Porteret 
to Jacques, as he struck a spark into his tinder 
with the flint and steel which a woodsman car- 
ried everywhere. 

" He is not likely to have one to-night, even 
in this safe cove," responded Jacques, kneeling 
to help, and anxious for supper. " Look now^ at 
me ; I know the Indian way to start a blaze by 
taking two pieces of wood and boring one into 
the other, rubbing it thus- between my palms. 



8 Heroes of the Middle West. 

It is a gift. Not many voyageurs can accom- 
plish that." 

"Rub thy two stupid heads together and 
make a blaze," said another hungry man, coming 
with a kettle of lake water. But the fire soon 
climbed pinkly through surrounding darkness. 
They drove down two forked supports to hold a 
crosspiece, and hung the kettle to boil their 
hulled corn. Then the fish which had been 
taken by trolling during the day were dressed 
and broiled on hot coals. 

The May starlight was very keen over their 
heads in a dark blue sky which seemed to rise 
to infinite heights, for the cold northern night 
air swept it of every film. Their first delicious 
meal was blessed and eaten ; and stretched in 
blankets, with their feet to the camp fire, the 
tired explorers rested. They were still on the 
north shore of what we now call the state of 
Michigan, and their course had been due west- 
ward by the compass. A cloud of Indian tobacco 
smoke rose from the lowly roof of each canoe, 
and its odor mingled with the sweet acrid breath 
of burning wood. Jolliet and the voyageurs had 
learned to use this dried browii weed, which all 
tribes held in great esteem and carried about 
with them in their rovings. 



The Discoverers of the Upper Mississipin. 9 

" If true tales be told of the water around the 
Bay of the Puans," one of the voyageurs was 
heard to say as he stretched himself under the 
canoe allotted to the men, " we may save our 
salt when we pass that country." 

"Have you ever heard, Father," JoUiet in- 
quired of the missionary, " that the word Puan 
meant foul or ill-smelling instead of salty?" 

"I know," Marquette answered, "that salt 
has a vile odor to the Indians. They do not 
use it with their food, preferring to season that 
instead with the sugar they make from the 
maple tree. Therefore, the bay into which we 
are soon to venture they call the Bay of the 
Fetid, or ill-smelling salty country, on account 
of saline water thereabout." 

" Then why do the Winnebago tribe on 
this bay allow themselves to be called 
Puans?" 

" That has never been explained by the mis- 
sionaries sent to that post, though the name 
seems to carry no reproach. They are well 
made and tall of stature. I find Wild Oats a 
stranger name — the Menomonies are Wild Oats 
Indians. Since the gospel has been preached 
to all these tribes for some years past, I trust 
we may find good Christians among them." 



10 Heroes of the Middle West. 

" What else have you learned about the coun- 
try?" 

" Father Dablon told me that the way to the 
head of that river called Fox, up which we must 
paddle, is as hard as the way to heaven, spe- 
cially the rapids. But when you arrive there it 
is a natural paradise." 

" We have tremendous labor before us," mused 
Jolliet. " Father, did you ever have speech with 
that Jean Nicollet, wdio, first of any Frenchman, 
got intimations of the great river? " 

" I never saw him." 

" There was a man I would have traveled far 
to see, though he was long a renegade among sav- 
ages, and returned to the settlements only to die." 

" Heaven save this expedition from becoming 
renegade among savages by forgetting its high- 
est object ! " breathed Marquette. 

His companion smiled toward the pleasant 
fire-light. Jolliet had once thought of becoming a 
priest himself. He venerated this young apostle, 
only half a dozen years his senior. But he was 
glad to be a free adventurer, seeking wealth and 
honor ; not foreseeing that though the great 
island of Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence 
would be given him for his services, he would 
die a poor and neglected man. 



The Discoverers of the Upper Mississippi. 11 

When, after days of steady progress, the ex- 
pedition entered the Bay of Puans, now called 
Green Bay, and found the nation of Menomo- 
nies or Wild Oats Indians, Marquette was as 
much interested as Jolliet in the grain which 
gave these people their bread. It grew like 
rice, in marshy places, on knotted stalks which 
appeared above the water in June and rose sev- 
eral feet higher. The grain seed was long and 
slender and made plentiful meal. The Indians 
gathered this volunteer harvest in September, 
when the kernels were so ripe that they dropped 
readily into canoes pushed among the stalks. 
They were then spread out on lattice work and 
smoked to dry the chaff, which could be trodden 
loose when the whole bulk, tied in a skin bag, 
was put into a hollow in the ground made for 
that purpose. The Indians pounded their grain 
to meal and cooked it with fat. 

The Menomonies tried to prevent Marquette 
and Jolliet from going farther. They said the 
great river was dangerous, full of frightful 
monsters that swallowed both men and canoes ; 
that there was a roaring demon in it who could 
be heard for leagues ; and the heat was so in- 
tense in those southern countries throuQ^h which 
it flowed, that if the Frenchmen escaped all 



12 Heroes of the Middle West. 

other dangers, they must die of that. Mar- 
quette told them his own life was nothing com- 
pared to the good word he wanted to carry to 
those southern tribes, and he laughed at the 
demon and instructed them in his own religion. 

The aboriginal tribes, by common instinct, 
tried from the first to keep the white man out 
of countries which he was determined to over- 
run and possess, regardless of danger. 

At the end of a voyage of thirty leagues, or 
about ninety miles, the explorers reached the 
head of the Bay of Puans, and a region thickly 
settled with Winnebagoes and Pottawotomies 
between the bay and Winnebago Lake, Sacs on 
Fox River, and Mascoutins, Kickapoos, and 
Miamis. Fox River, which they followed from 
the head of the bay, and of which the lake 
seemed only an expansion, was a rocky stream. 
A later traveler has told us that Fox River in 
its further extent is very crooked, and while 
seeming wide, with a boundary of hills on each 
hand, it affords but a slender channel in a marsh 
full of rushes and wild oats. 

The Kickapoos and Mascoutins were rude, 
coarse-featured Indians. Though the mission- 
ary exhorted them as seriously as he did their 
gentler neighbors, he could not help remarking 



The Discoverers of the Upper Mississippi. 13 

to Jolliet that " the Miamis were better made, 
and the two long earlocks which they wore gave 
them a good appearance." 

It was the seventh day of June when the 
explorers arrived in this country of cabins 
woven of rushes ; and they did not linger here. 
Frenchmen had never gone farther. They were 
to enter new lands untrodden by the white race. 
They were in what is now called the state of 
Wisconsin, where "the soil was good," they 
noted, " producing much corn ; and the Indians 
gathered also quantities of plums and grapes." In 
these warmer lands the season progressed rapidly . 

Marquette and Jolliet called the chiefs together 
and told them that Jolliet was sent by the gov- 
ernor to find new countries, and Marquette had 
been commissioned of Heaven to preach. Mak- 
ing the chiefs a present, without which they 
would not have received the talk seriously, the 
explorers asked for guides to that tributary 
which was said to run into the great river. 

The chiefs responded with the gift of a rush 
mat for Marquette and Jolliet to rest on during 
their journey, and sent two young Miamis with 
them. If these kindly Indians disliked to set 
the expedition further on its way, they said 
nothing but very polite things about the hardi- 



14 Heroes of the Middle West. 

hood of Frenchmen, who coukl venture with 
only two canoes, and seven in their party, on 
unknown worlds. 

The young Miamis, in a boat of their own, 
led out the procession the tenth morning of 
June. Taking up paddles, the voyageurs looked 
back at an assembled multitude — perhaps the 
last kindly natives on their perilous way — and 
at the knoll in the midst of prairies where hos- 
pitable rush houses stood and would stand until 
the inmates took them down and rolled them 
up to carry to hunting grounds, and at groves 
dotting those pleasant prairies where guests were 
abundantly fed. 

Three leagues up the marshy and oats-choked 
Fox River, constantly widening to little lakes 
and receding to a throat of a channel, brought 
the explorers to tlie portage, or carrying place. 
The canoes then had to be unloaded, and both 
cargo and boats carried overland to a bend of 
the Miscousing, which was the Indian name for 
Wisconsin River. " This portage," says a trav- 
eler who afterwards followed that way, " is half 
a league in length, and half of that is a kind of 
marsh full of mud." In wet seasons the head 
of Fox River at that time seemed not unlikely 
to find the Wisconsin, for Marquette has set 



The Discoverers of the TJxjpev Mississippi. 15 

it down in his recital that the portage was only 
twenty-seven hundred paces. 

When the two Miamis had helped to carry 
the goods and had set the French on the tribu- 
tary of the great river, they turned back to their 
own country. Before the men entered the boats 
Marquette knelt down with them on the bank 
and prayed for the success of the undertaking. 
It was a lovely broad river on w^hich they now 
embarked, with shining sands showing through 
the clear water, making shallows like tumbling 
discs of brilliant metal, — a river in which the 
canoes might sometimes run aground, but one 
that deceived the eye pleasantly, with islands all 
vine covered, so when a boat clove a way between 
two it was a guess how far the Wisconsin spread 
away on each side to shores of a fertile land. 
Oaks, walnuts, whitewood, and thorn trees 
crowded the banks or fell apart, showing prai- 
ries rolling to wooded hills. Deer were sur- 
prised, stretching their delicate necks down to 
drink at the margin. They looked up with shy 
large eyes at such strange objects moving on 
their stream, and shot off through the brush 
like red-brown arrows tipped with white. The 
moose planted its forefeet and stared stolidly, 
its broad horns set in defense. 



16 Heroes of the Middle West. 

■' Sieur Jolliet," said the missionary, once when 
the canoes drew together, " we have now left 
the waters which flow into the great lakes and 
are discharged through the St. Lawrence past 
Quebec to the sea. We follow those that lead 
us into strange lands." 

'' This river Miscousing on which we now 
are," returned Jolliet, " flows, as we see by our 
compass, to the southwestward. We know it 
is a branch of the great river. I am becoming 
convinced. Father, that the great river cannot 
discharge itself toward the east, as some have 
supposed." 

The explorers estimated the distance from the 
country of the Mascoutins to the portage to 
be three leagues, and from the portage to the 
mouth of the Miscousing forty leagues. This 
distance they covered in a week. Drawing their 
canoes to the shore at night, they pitched camp, 
varying the monotony of tlieir stores with fish 
and game. Perhaps they had learned that wild 
grapes then budding were not really fit to eat 
until touched by frost. Pierre Porteret said in 
Marquette's hearing, " the Indians could make 
good wine of grapes and plums if they desired." 

The 17th of June, exactly one month from 
the day on which they had left St. Ignace mis- 



The Discoverers of the Upper Mississippi. 17 

sion, the explorers paddled into a gentle clear 
river, larger than the Miscousing but not yet 
monstrous in width, which ran southward. 
High hills guarded the right-hand shore, and 
the left spread away in fair meadows. Its cur- 
rent was broken with many little islands, like 
the Miscousing, though on sounding, Jolliet 
found the water to be ten fathoms, or sixty feet, 
deep. The shores receding, and then drawing 
in, gave unequal and irregular width to the 
stream. But it was unmistakably the great 
river they had sought, named then as now 
by the Indians, Mississippi, though Marquette 
at once christened it Conception, and another 
Frenchman who came after him gave it the 
name of Colbert. It was the river of which 
Nicollet had brought hints from his wanderings 
among northwestern tribes : the great artery 
of the middle continent, or, as that party of 
explorers believed, of the entire west. Receiv- 
ing into itself tributaries, it rolled, draining a 
mighty basin, to unknown seas. 

The first white men ventured forth upon its 
upper channel in two birch canoes. Five hardy 
voices raised a shout which was thrown back in 
an echo from the hills ; five caps were whirled 
as high as paddles could raise them. But Mar- 



18 Heroes of the Middle West. 

quette said, "This is such joy as we cannot 
express ! " The men in both canoes silenced 
themselves while he gave thanks for the dis- 
covery. 



t V 





FATHER JACQUES MARQUETTE. 

From !i Statue in the Capitol at Washing-ton. 



11. 

BEARERS OF THE CALUMET. 

Moving clown the Mississippi, league after 
league, the explorers noted first of all its soli- 
tude. Wigwam smoke could not be seen on 
either shore. Silence, save the breathing of 
the river as it rolled on its course, seemed to 
surround and threaten them with ambush. 
Still, day after day, the sweet and awful pres- 
ence of the wilderness Avas their only company. 
Once Pierre Porteret dropped his paddle with a 
yell which was tossed about by echoing islands. 
A thing with a tiger's forehead and a wildcat's 
whiskered snout, holding ears and entire gray 
and black head above the water, swam for the 
boat. But it dived and disappeared ; and the 
other voyageurs felt safe in laughing at him. 
Not long after, Jacques bellowed aloud as he 
saw a living tree glide under the canoe, jarring 
it from end to end. The voyageurs soon learned 
to know the huge sluggish catfish. They also 
caught plenty of sturgeon or shovel fish when 
they cast in their nets. 

19 



20 Heroes of the Middle West. 

The river descended from its hilly cradle to 
a country of level distances. The explorers, 
seeing nothing of men, gave more attention 
to birds and animals. Wild turkeys with bur- 
nished necks and breasts tempted the hunters. 
The stag uttered far off his whistling call of 
defiance to other stags. And they began to see 
a shaggy ox, humped, with an enormous head 
and short black horns, and a mane hanging over 
low-set wicked eyes. Its body was covered with 
curly rough hair. They learned afterwards from 
Indians to call these savage cattle pisikious, 
or buffaloes. Herds of many hundreds grazed 
together, or, startled, galloped away, like thun- 
der rolling along the ground. 

The explorers kindled very little fire on shore 
to cook their meals, and they no longer made a 
camp, but after eating, pushed out and anchored, 
sleeping in their canoes. Every night a senti- 
nel was set to guard against surprise. By the 
25th of June they had passed through sixty 
leamies of solitude. The whole American con- 
tinent Avas thinly settled by native tribes, many 
in name indeed, but of scant numbers. The 
most dreaded savages in the New World were 
the Iroquois or Five Nations, living south of 
Lake Ontario. Yet they were never able to 



Bearers of the Calumet. 21 

muster more than about twenty-two hundred 
fighting men. 

The canoes were skirtmg the western bank, 
driven by the current, when one voyageur 
called to another: 

" My scalp for the sight of an Indian ! " 
"Halt!" the forward paddler answered. 
" Look to thy scalp, lad, for here is the Indian !" 
There was no feathered head in ambush, but 
they saw moccasin prints in the low moist mar- 
gin and a path leading up to the prairie. 

Marquette and JoUiet held the boats together 
while they consulted. 

" Do you think it wise to pass by without 
searching what this may mean, Father? " 

" No, I do not. We might thus leave enemies 
behind our backs to cut off our return. Some 
Indian village is near. It would be my counsel 
to approach and offer friendship." 

"Shall we take the men?" debated Jolliet. 
" Two of them at least should stay to guard the 



canoes " 



" Let them all stay to guard the canoes. If 
we go unarmed and unattended, we shall not 
raise suspicion in the savages' minds." 

"But we may raise suspicion in our own 
minds." 



22 Heroes of the Middle Went 

Marquette laughed. 

" The barbarous peo^Dle ou this unexplored 
river have us at their mercy," he declared. 
" We can at best do little to defend our- 
selves." 

" Let us reconnoitre," said Jolliet. 

Taking some of the goods which they had 
brought along for presents, Jolliet bade the men 
wait their return and climbed the bank with 
the missionary. The path led through prairie 
grass, gay at that season with flowers. The 
delicate buttercup-like sensitive plant shrank 
from their feet in wet places. Neither French- 
man had yet seen the deadly rattlesnake of 
these southern countries, singing as a great fly 
might sing in a web, dart out of its spotted 
spiral to fasten a death bite upon a victim. 
They walked in silence, dreading only the 
human beings they were going to meet. When 
they had gone about two leagues, the path drew 
near the wooded bank of a little stream drain- 
ing into the Mississippi which they had scarcely 
noticed from the canoes. There they saw an 
Indian village, and farther off, up a hill, more 
groups of wigwams. They heard the voices of 
children, and nobody suspected their approach. 

Jolliet and Marquette halted. Not knowing 



Bearers of the Calumet. 23 

how else to announce their presence, they shouted 
together as loud as they could shout. The sav- 
ages ran out of their Avigwams and darted about 
in confusion until they saw the two motionless 
white men. The long black cassock of Mar- 
quette had instant effect upon them. For their 
trinkets and a few garments on their bodies 
showed that they had trafficked with Euro- 
peans. 

Four old Indians, slowly and with ceremony, 
came out to meet the explorers, holding up 
curious pipes trimmed with many kinds of 
feathers. As soon as they drew near, Mar- 
quette called out to them in Algonquin : 

"What tribe is this?" 

" The Illinois," answered the old man. Being 
a branch of the great Algonquin family, which 
embraced nearly all northern aboriginal nations, 
with the notable exception of the Iroquois, these 
people had a dialect which the missionary could 
understand. The name Illinois meant "The 
Men." 

Marquette and JoUiet were led to the prin- 
cipal lodge. Outside the door, waiting for 
them, stood another old Indian like a statue 
of wrinkled bronze. For he had stripped him- 
self to do honor to the occasion, and held up 



24 Heroes of the Middle West. 

his hands to screen his face from the sun, mak- 
ing graceful and dignified gestures as he greeted 
the strangers. 

" How bright is the sun when you come to 
see us, O Frenchmen ! Our lodges are all open 
to you." 

The visitors were then seated in the wigwam, 
and the pipe, or calumet, offered them to smoke, 
all the Indians crowding around and saying : 




Calumet. 



" You do well to visit us, brothers." 

Obliged to observe this peace ceremony, Mar- 
quette put the pipe to his lips, but Jolliet, used 
to the tobacco weed, puffed with a good will. 

The entire village then formed a straggling 
procession, gazing at the Frenchmen, whom 
they guided farther to the chief's town. He 
also met them standing with a naked retinue at 
his door, and the calumet was again smoked. 

The Illinois lodges were shaped like the 
rounded cover of an emigrant wagon, high, 
and very long, having an opening left along 



Bearers of the Calumet. 25 

the top for the escape of smoke. They were 
made of rush mats, which the women wove, 
overlapped as shingles on a framework of 
poles. Rush mats also carpeted the ground, 
except where fires burned in a row along the 
middle. Each fire was used by two families 
who lived opposite, in stalls made of blankets. 
The ends of the lodge had flaps to shut out the 
weather, but these were left wide open to the 
summer sun. D uring visits of ceremony a guest 
stood where he could be seen and heard by all 
who could crowd into the wigwam. But when 
the Illinois held important councils they made 
a circular inclosure, and built a camp-fire in the 
center. Many families and many fires filled a 
long wigwam, though Jolliet and Marquette 
were lodged with the chief, who had one for 
himself and his household. 

Whitening embers were sending threads of 
smoke towards a strip of blue sky overhead 
when the missionary stood up to explain his 
errand in the crowded inclosure, dividing his 
talk into four parts with presents. By the first 
gift of cloth and beads he told his listeners that 
the Frenchmen were voyaging in peace to visit 
nations on the river. By the second he said : 

" I declare to you that God, your Creator, has 



26 Hei'oes of the Middle West. 

pity on you, since, when you have been so long 
ignorant of him, he wishes to become known to 
you. I am sent on his behalf with this design. 
It is for you to acknowledge and obey him." 

By the third gift they were informed that the 
chief of the French had s^^read peace and over- 
come the Iroquois. And the last begged for 
all the information they could give about the 
sea and intervening nations. 

When Marquette sat down, the chief stood 
up and laid his hand on the head of a little 
slave, prisoner from another tribe. 

" I thank you, Blackgown," he said, " and 
you. Frenchman, for taking so much pains to 
come and visit us. The earth has never been 
so beautiful, nor the sun so bright, as to-day ; 
never has the river been so calm and free from 
rocks, which your canoes removed as they passed! 
Never has our tobacco had so fine a flavor, nor 
our corn appeared so beautiful as we find it 
to-day. Here is my son. I give him to you 
that you may know my heart. Take pity on 
us and all our nation. You know the Great 
Spirit who made all : you speak to him and 
hear him ; ask him to give us life and health 
and come and dwell with us." 

When the chief had presented his guests with 



Bearers of the Calumet. 27 

the Indian boy, and again offered the calumet, 
he urged them, with belts and garters of 
buffalo wool, brilliantly dyed, to go no farther 
down the great river, on account of dangers. 
These compliments being ended, a feast was 
brought in four courses. First came a Avooden 
dish of sagamity or corn-meal boiled in water 
and grease. The chief took a buffalo-horn 
spoon and fed his guests as if they had been 
little children ; three or four spoonfuls he put 
in Marquette's mouth and three or four spoon- 
fuls in Jolliet's. Three fish were brought next, 
and he picked out the bones with his own fin- 
gers, blew on the food to cool it, and stuffed 
the explorers with all he could make them 
accept. It was their part to open their mouths 
as young birds do. The third course was that 
most delicate of Indian dishes, a fine dog ; but 
seeing that his guests shrank from this, the 
chief ended the meal with buffalo meat, giv- 
ing them the fattest parts. 

The Illinois were at that time on the west 
side of the Mississippi, because they had been 
driven from their own country on the Illinois 
River by the Iroquois. The Illinois nation was 
made up of several united tribes : Kaskaskias, 
Peorias, Kahokias, Tamaroas, and Moingona. 



28 Heroes of the Middle West. 

Flight scattered them, and these were only a 
few of their villages. They afterwards returned 
to their own land. Their chief wore a scarf or 
belt of fur crossing his left shoulder, encircling 
his waist and hanging in fringe. Arm and leg 
bands ornamented him, and he also had knee 
rattles of deer hoofs. Paint made of colored 
clays streaked his face. This attractive creature 
sent the Indian crier around, beating a drum of 
deer hide stretched over a pot, to proclaim the 
calumet dance in honor of the explorers. 

Marquette and Jolliet were led out in the 
prairie to a small grove which sheltered the 
assembly from the afternoon sun. Even the 
women left their maize fields and the beans, 
melons, and squaslies that they were cultivating, 
and old squaws dropped rush braiding, and with 
papooses swarming about their knees, followed. 
The Illinois were nimble, well-formed people, 
skillful with bow and arrow. They had, more- 
over, some guns among them, obtained from 
allies who had roved and traded with the 
French. Young braves imitated the gravity of 
their elders at this important ceremony. The 
Illinois never ate new fruits or bathed at the 
beginning of summer, without first dancing the 
calumet. 



Beavers of the Calmnet 29 

A large gay mat of rushes was spread in the 
center of the grove, and the warrior selected to 
dance put his god, or manitou — some tiny 
carven image which he carried around his per- 
son and to which he prayed — on the mat 
beside a beautiful calumet. Around them he 
spread his bow and arrows, his war club, and 




War Club. 



stone hatchet. The pipe was made of red rock 
like brilliantly polished marble, hollowed to 
hold tobacco. A stick two feet long, as thick 
as a cane, formed the stem. For the dance 
these pipes were often decked with gorgeous 
scarlet, green, and iridescent feathers, though 
white plumes alone made them the symbol of 
peace, and red quills bristled over them for 
war. 

Young squaws and braves who were to sing, 
sat down on the ground in a group near the 
mat ; but the multitude spread in a great circle 
around it. Men of importance before taking 
their seats on the short grass, each in turn lifted 
the calumet, which was filled, and blew a little 



30 Heroes of the Middle West. 

smoke on the maiiitou. Then the dancer sprang 
out, and, with graceful curvings in time to the 
music, seized the pipe and offered it now to the 
sun and now to the earth, made it dance from 
mouth to mouth along the Unes of spectators, 
with all its fluttering plumes spread. The hazy 
sun shone slanting among branches, tracing a 
network of flickering leaf shadows on short 
grass ; and liquid young voices rising and fall- 
ing chanted, 

"Nanahani, iianahani, iianahani, 
Xaniango ! " 

The singers were joined by the Indian drum ; 
and at that another dancer sprang into the 




Stone Hatchet. 



circle and took the weapons from the mat to 
fight with the principal dancer, who had no 
defense but the calumet. With measured steps 
and a floating motion of the body the two ad- 
vanced and attacked, parried and retreated, 
until the man with the pipe drove his enemy 
from the ring. Papooses of a dark brick-red 
color watched with glistenino- black eyes the 



& "^ & 



Bearers of the Calumet. 31 

last part of the dance, which celebrated victory. 
The names of nations fought, the prisoners 
taken, and all the trophies brought home were 
paraded by means of the calumet. 

The chief presented the dancer with a fine 
fur robe when he ended ; and, taking the calu- 
met from his hand, gave it to an old man in the 
circle. This one passed it to the next, and so 
it went around the huge ring until all had held 
it. Then the chief approached the white men. 

" Blackgown," he said, '' and you. French- 
man, I give you this peace-pipe to be your safe- 
guard wherever you go among the tribes. It 
shall be feathered with white plumes, and dis- 
playing it you may march fearlessly among 
enemies. It has power of life and death, and 
honor is paid to it as to a manitou. Black- 
gown, I give you this calumet in token of peace 
between your governor and the Illinois, and to 
remind you of your promise to come again and 
instruct us in your religion." 

The explorers slept soundly all night in the 
chief's lodge, feeling as safe as among Christian 
Indians of the north, who stuck thorns in a 
calendar to mark Sundays and holydays. Next 
morning the chief went with several hundred 
of his people to escort them to their canoes; 



32 Heroes of the Middle West. 

but it was three o'clock in the afternoon before 
the voyageurs, dropping down stream, saw the 
last of the friendly tribe. 

Day after day the boats moved on without 
meeting other inhabitants. Mulberries, per- 
simmons, and hazelnuts were found on the 
shores. They passed the mouth of the Illinois 
River without knowing its name, or that it 
flowed through lands owned by the tribe that 
had given them the peace-pipe. Farther on, 
the Mississippi made one of its many bends, 
carrying them awhile directly eastward, and 
below great rocks like castles. As the canoes 
ran along the foot of this east shore, some of 
the voyageurs cried out. For on the face of the 
cliff far up were two painted monsters in glaring 
red, green, and black; each as large as a calf, 
with deer horns, blood-colored eyes, tiger beard, 
a human face, and a body covered with scales. 
Coiled twice around the middle, over the head, 
and passing between the hind legs of each, 
extended a tail that ended like a fish. So 
startling was this sight, which seemed a banner 
held aloft heralding unseen dangers, that the 
men felt threatened by a demon. But Mar- 
quette laughed at them and beckoned for the 
canoes to be brought together. 



Bearers of the Calumet. 33 

" What manner of thing is this, Sieur 
Jolliet?" 

''A pair of manitous, evidently. If we had 
Indians with us, we should see them toss a little 
tobacco out as an offering in passing by." 

" I cannot think," said Marquette, " that any 
Indian has been the designer. Good painters 
in France would find it hard to do as well. 
Besides this, the creatures are so high upon the 
rock that it was hard to get conveniently at 
them to paint them. And how could such 
colors be mixed in this wilderness ? " 

" We have seen what pigments and clays the 
Illinois used in daubing themselves. These 
wild tribes may have among them men with 
natural skill in delineating," said Jolliet. 

"I will draw them off," Marquette deter- 
mined, bringing out the papers on which he 
set down his notes ; and while the men stuck 
their paddles in the water to hold the canoes 
against the current, he made his drawing. 

One of the monsters seen by the explorers 
remained on those rocks until the middle of 
our own century. It was called by the Indians 
the Piasa. More than two centuries of beating 
winter storms had not effaced the brilliant 
picture when it was quarried away by a stupidly 



34 Heroes of the MidrUe West. 

barbarous civilization. The town of Alton, in 
the state of Illinois, is a little south of that rock 
where the Piasa dragons were seen. 

As the explorers moved ahead on glassy 
waters, they looked back, and the line of vision 
changing, they saw that the figures were cut 
into the cliff and painted in hollow relief. 

They were still talking about the monsters 
w^hen they heard the roar of a rapid ahead, and 
the limpid Mississippi turned southward on its 
course. It was as if they had never seen the 
great river until this instant. For a mighty 
flood, rushing through banks from the west, 
yellow with mud, noisy as a storm, eddying 
islands of branches, stumps, whole trees, took 
possession of the fair stream they had followed 
so long. It shot across the current of the Mis- 
sissippi in entering so that the canoes danced 
like eggshells and were dangerously forced to 
the eastern bank. Afterwards they learned 
that this was the Pekitanoiii, or, as we now 
call it, the Missouri Piver, which flows into the 
Mississippi not far above the present city of St. 
Louis; and that by following it to its head 
waters and making a short portage across a 
prairie, a man might in time enter the Red or 
Vermilion Sea of California. 



Bearers of the Calumet. 35 

Having slipped out of the Missouri's reach, 
the explorers were next threatened by a whirl- 
pool among rocks before they reached the mouth 
of Ouaboukigou, the Ohio River. They saw 
purple, red, and violet earths, which ran down 
in streams of color when wet, and a sand which 
stained their paddles like blood. Tall canes 
began to feather the shore, and mosquitoes 
tormented them as they pressed on through 
languors of heat. Jolliet and Marquette made 
awnings of sails which they had brought as a 
help to the paddles. They were floating down 
the current of the muddy, swollen river when 
they saw Indians with guns on the east shore. 
The voyageurs dropped their paddles and seized 
their own weapons. Marquette stood up and 
spoke to the Indians in Huron. They made no 
answer. He held up the white calumet. Then 
they began to beckon, and when the party drew 
to land, they made it clear that they had them- 
selves been frightened until they saw the Black- 
robe holding the calumet. A long-haired tribe, 
somewhat resembling the Iroquois, but calling 
themselves Tuscaroras; they were rovers, and 
had axes, hoes, knives, beads, and double glass 
bottles holding gunpowder, for which they had 
traded Avith white people eastward. 



36 



Heroes of the 3Uddle West. 



They fed the French with buffalo meat and 
white plums, and declared it was but a ten 
days' journey to the sea. In this they were mis- 
taken, for it was more than a thousand miles 
to the Gulf of Mexico. 

To each tribe as he passed, Marquette preached 
his faith by the belt of the prayer. For each 




Wampum Girdle. 

he had a wampum girdle to hold while he talked, 
and to leave for a remembrance. His Avords 
without a witness would be forgotten. 

Three hundred miles farther the explorers 
ventured, and had nearly reached the mouth of 
the Arkansas River, floating on a wide expanse 
of water between lofty woods, Avhen they heard 
wild yelling on the west shore, and saw a crowd 
of savages pushing out huge wooden canoes to 
surround them. Some swam to seize the French- 
men, and a war club was thrown over their 
heads. Marquette held up the peace-pipe, but 
the wild young braves in the water paid no 



Bearers of the Calumet. 37 

attention to it. Arrows were ready to fly from 
all sides, and Marquette held the peace-pipe 
on high and continually prayed. At once old 
Indians restrained the young ones. In their 
turmoil they liad not at first seen the calumet ; 
but two chiefs came directly out to bring the 
strangers ashore. 

Not one of the missionary's six languages was 
understood by these Indians. He at last found 
a man who spoke a little Illinois, and Jolliet 
and he were able to explain their errand. He 
preached by presents, and obtained a guide to 
the next nation. 

On that part of the river where the French 
came to a halt, the Spanish explorer De Soto 
was said to have died two hundred years before. 
In this region the Indians had never seen snow, 
and their land yielded three crops a year. Their 
pots and plates were of baked earth, and they 
kept corn in huge gourds, or in baskets woven 
of cane fibers. They knew nothing of beaver 
skins; tiieir furs were the hides of buffaloes. 
Watermelons grew abundantly in their fields. 
Though they had large wigwams of bark, they 
wore no clothing, and hung beads from their 
pierced noses and ears. 

These Akamsea, or Arkansas Indians showed 



38 Heroes of the Middle West. 

traits of the Aztecs under Spanish dominion; 
for what is now the state of Texas was then 
claimed by Spain. Marquette and Jolliet held 
a council. They were certain that the great 
river discharged itself into the Gulf of Mexico. 
If they ventured farther, they might fall into 
the hands of Spaniards, who would imprison 
them ; or they might be killed by fiercer tribes 
than any yet encountered, and in either case 
their discoveries would be lost. So they decided 
to turn back. 

All day the Arkansas feasted them with 
merciless savage hospitality, and it was not 
polite to refuse food or the attention of rock- 
ing. Two stout Indians would seize a voyageur 
between them and rock him back and forth for 
hours. If the motion nauseated him, that was 
his misfortune. 

Pierre Porteret crept out behind one of the 
bark lodges looking very miserable in the fog of 
early morning. His companion on many a long 
journey, never far out of his shadow, sat down 
to compare experiences. 

" Did they rock thee all night, Pierre? " 

" They rocked me all night, Jacques. I can 
well endure what most men can, but this is 
carrying politeness too far." 



Bearers of the Calumet. 39 

"I was not so favored. They would have 
saved you if they had killed the rest of us. 
And they would have saved the good father, 
no doubt, since the chief came and danced the 
calumet before him." 

" Were these red cradle-rockers intending to 
make an end of us in the night? " 

" So the chief says ; but he broke up the 
council, and will set us safely on our journey 
up river to-day." 

"I am glad of that," said Pierre. "Father 
Marquette hath not the strength of the Sieur 
Jolliet for such rude wanderings. These south- 
ern mists, and torturing insects, and clammy 
heats, and the bad food have worked a great 
change in him." 

"We have been gone but two months from 
the Mission of St. Ignace," said Jacques. " They 
have the bigness of years." 

" And many more months that have the big- 
ness of years will pass before we see it again." 

They grew more certain of this, when, after 
toiling up the current through malarial nights 
and sweltering days, the explorers left the Mis- 
sissippi and entered the river Illinois. There, 
above Peoria Lake, another Illinois town of 
seventy-four lodges was found, and these Kas- 



40 Heroes of the Middle West. 

kaskias so clung to the Blackrobe that he 
promised to come back and teach them. From 
the head waters of the Illinois a portage was 
made to Lake Michigan, and the French returned 
to the Bay of the Puans alongshore. They had 
traveled over twenty-five hundred miles, and 
accomplished the object of their journey. 

JoUiet, with his canoe of voyageurs, his maps 
and papers, and the young Indian boy given 
him by the Illinois chief, went on to Montreal. 
His canoe was upset in the rapids of Lachine 
just above Montreal, and he lost two men, the 
Indian boy, his papers, and nearly everything 
except his life. But he was able to report to 
the governor all that he had seen and done. 

Marquette lay ill, at the Bay of the Puans, of 
dysentery, brought on by hardship ; and he was 
never well again. Being determined, however, 
to go back and preach to the tribe on the Illinois 
River, he waited all winter and all the next sum- 
mer to regain his strength. He carefully wrote 
out and sent to Canada the story of his discov- 
eries and labors. In autumn, with Pierre Por- 
teret and the voyageur Jacques, he ventured 
again to the Illinois. Once he became so ill 
they were obliged to stop and build him a cabin 
in the wilderness, at the risk of being snowed 



Bearers of the Caliimet. 41 

in all Avinter. It was not until April that he 
reached what he called his Mission of the 
Immaculate Conception, on the Illinois River, 
through snow, and water and mud, hunger and 
misery. He preached until after Easter, when, 
his strength being exhausted, Pierre and Jacques 
undertook to carry him home to the Mission of 
St. Ignace. Marquette had been two years 
away from his palisaded station on the north 
shore, and nine years in the New World. 

It was the 19 th of May, and Pierre and 
Jacques were paddling their canoe along the 
east side of that great lake known jiow as 
Michigan. A creek parted the rugged coast, 
and dipping near its shallow mouth they looked 
anxiously at each other. 

"What shall we do?" whispered Jacques. 

" We must get on as fast as we can," answered 
Pierre. 

They were gaunt and weather-beaten them- 
selves from two years' tramping the wilderness. 
But their eyes dwelt most piteously on the dying 
man stretched in the bottom of the canoe. His 
thin fingers held a cross. His white face and 
bright hair rested on a pile of blankets. Pierre 
and Jacques felt that no lovelier, kinder being 
than this scarcely breathing missionary would 



42 Heroes of the Middle West. 

ever float on the blue water under that blue 
sky. 

He opened his eyes and saw the creek they 
were slipping past, and a pleasant knoll beside 
it, and whispered : — 

" There is the place of my burial." 

"But, Father," pleaded Pierre, "it is yet 
early in the day. We can take you farther." 

" Carry me ashore here," he whispered again. 

So they entered the creek and took him 
ashore, building a fire and sheltering him as 
well as they could. There a few hours after- 
ward he died, the weeping men holding up his 
cross before him, while he thanked the Divine 
Majesty for letting him die a poor missionary. 
When he could no longer speak, they repeated 
'aloud the prayers he had taught them. 

They left him buried on that shore with a 
large cross standing over his grave. Later his 
Indians" removed his bones to the Mission of St. 
Ignace, with a procession of canoes and a priest 
intoning. They were placed under the altar of 
his own chapel. If you go to St. Ignace, jou 
may see a monument now on that spot, and 
people have believed they traced the foundation 
of the old bark chapel. But the spot where he 
first lay was long venerated. 



Bearers of the Calumet. 43 

A great fur trader and pioneer named Gurdon 
Hubbard made this record about the place, which 
he visited in 1818 : — 

" We reached Marquette River, about where 
the town of Ludington now stands on the 
Michigan shore. This was where Father Mar- 
quette died, about one hundred and forty years 
before, and we saw the remains of a red-cedar 
cross, erected by his men at the time of his 
death to mark his grave ; and though his remains 
had been removed to the Mission, at Point St. 
Ignace, the cross was held sacred by the voy- 
ageurs, who, in passing, paid reverence to it, 
by kneeling and making the sign of the cross. 
It was about three feet above the ground, and 
in a falling condition. We reset it, leaving 
it out of the ground about two feet, and as I 
never saw it after, I doubt not that it was 
covered by the drifting sands of the following 
winter, and that no white man ever saw it 
afterwards." 



III. 

THE MAN WITH THE COPPER HAND. 

One day at the end of August, when Mar- 
quette's bones had lain under his chapel altar 
nearly two years and a half, the first ship ever 
seen upon the lakes was sighted off St. 
Ignace. Hurons and Ottawas, French traders, 
and coureurs de bois, or wood-rangers, ran out 
to see the huge winged creature scudding 
betwixt Michilimackinac Island and Round 
Island. She was of about forty-five tons' bur- 
den. Five cannon showed through her port- 
holes, and as she came nearer, a carved dragon 
was seen to be her figurehead; she displayed 
the name Griffin and bore the white flag 
of France. The priest himself felt obliged to 
receive her company, for three Recollet friars, 
in the gray robe of St. Francis, appeared on the 
deck. But two men, one in a mantle of scarlet 
and gold, and the other in white and gold French 
uniform, were most watched by all eyes. 

The ship fired a salute, and the Indians 
howled with terror and started to run ; then 
44 




- CO 



= ^ 

■5 o 

^ X 

? m 

= 5 

'_ -n 



i % 



The Man ivitli the Copper Hand. 45 

turned back to see her drop her sails and her 
anchor, and come up in that deep crescent- 
shaped bay. She had weathered a hard storm 
in Lake Huron ; but the men who handled her 
ropes were of 
little interest to 
coureurs de bois 
on shore, who 
watched her 
masters coming 
to land. 

"ItistheSieur 
de la Salle in the 
scarlet mantle," 
one coureur de 
bois said to an- 
other. "And this 

,-, ^ • -i La Salle. 

IS the ship he 

hath been building at Niagara. First one hears 

that creditors have seized his fort of Fronte- 

nac, and then one beholds him sailing here in 

state, as though naught on earth could daunt 

him." 

"I would like service with him," said the 
other coureur de bois. 

His companion laughed. 

" Service with La Salle means the hardest 




46 Heroes of the Middle West. 

marching and heaviest labor a voyageur ever 
undertook. I have heard he is himself tough 
as iron. But men hereabouts who have been 
in his service will take to the woods when they 
hear he has arrived ; traders that he sent ahead 
with goods. If he gets his hand on them after 
he finds they have squandered his property, it 
w^ill go hard with them." 

'' He has a long gray-colored face above his 
broad shoulders. I have heard of this Sieur 
Robert Cavelier de la Salle ever since he came 
to the province more than ten years ago, but 
I never saw him before. Is it true that Count 
Frontenac is greatly bound to him?" 

" So true that Sieur de la Salle thereby got 
favor at court. It was at court that a prince 
recommended to him yon swart Italian in white 
and gold that he brought with him on his last 
voyage from France. Now, there is a man 
known already throughout the colony by reason 
of his hand." 

"Which hand?" 

" The right one." 

"I see naught ailing that. He wears long 
gauntlets pulled well over both wrists." 

" His left hand is on his sword hilt. Doth 
he not hold the right a little stiffly?" 



The Man with the Copper Hand. 47 

" It is true. The fingers are not bent." 

" They never will be bent. It is a hand of 
copper." 

" How can a man with a copper hand be of 
service in the wilderness?" 

The first ranger shrugged. " That I know 
not. But having been maimed in European 
wars and fitted with a copper hand, he was yet 
recommended to Sieur de la Salle." 

"But why hath an Italian the uniform of 
France?" 

" He is a French officer, having been exiled 
with his father from his own country." 

The coureur de bois, Avho had reached the 
settlement later than his companion, grunted. 

" One would say thou w^ert of the Griffin 
crew thyself, with the latest news from Quebec 
and Montreal." 

"Not I," laughed the first one. "I have only 
been in the woods with Greysolon du Lhut, who 
knows everything." 

" Then he told thee the name of this Italian 
with the copper hand?" 

"Assuredly. This Italian with the copper 
hand is Sieur Greysolon du Lhut's cousin, and 
his name is Henri de Tonty." 

"I will say this for Monsieur Henri de 



48 Heroes of the Middle iVest. 

Tonty : a better made man never stepped on 
the strand at St. Ignace." 

Greysolon du Lhut was the captain of coureurs 

de bois in the northwest. No other leader had 

such influence with the 

^^gm^^^ t laAvless and daring. 

'^ J^Jyji^ jfljf When these men were 

m^^^ ^ ir^I gathered in a settlement, 

*^^ spending what they had 

Autograph of Tonty. t . , . , . , 

earned in drinking and 
gaming, it was hard to restrain them within 
civilized bounds. But when they took service 
to shoulder loads and march into the wilderness, 
the strongest hand could not keep them from 
open rebellion and desertion. There were few 
devoted and faithful voyageurs, such as Pierre 
Porteret and Jacques had proved themselves in 
following Marquette. The term of service was 
usually two years ; but at the first hardship some 
might slip away in the night, even at the risk of 
perishing before they reached the settlements. 

St. Ignace made a procession behind La Salle's 
party and followed them into the chapel to hear 
mass — French traders, Ottawas, Hurons, cou- 
reurs de bois, squaws, and children. When tlie 
priest turned from the altar, he looked down on 
complexions ranging from the natural pallor of 



The Man ivith the Copper Hand. 



49 



La Salle to the black-red of the most weather- 
beaten native. 

The Hurons then living at St. Ignace, whom 
Father Marquette had led there from his earlier 
mission, af ter- 
wards wandered 
to Detroit and 
Sandusky, the 
priests having 
decided to aban- 
don St. Ignace 
and burn the 
chapel. In our 
own day we hear 
of their descend- 
ants as settled in 
the Indian Territory, the smallest but wealthiest 
band of all transplanted Indians. 

Having entered the lake region with impres- 
sive ceremonies, which he well knew how to 
employ before ignorant men and savages, La 
Salle threw aside his splendor, and, with his 
lieutenant, put on the buckskins for marching 
and canoe journeying into the wilderness. Some 
of the men he had sent up the lakes with goods 
nearly a year before had collected a large store 
of furs, worth much money; and these he de- 




Totem of the Hurons. 



50 Heroes of the Middle West. 

termined to send back to Canada on the Griffin, 
to satisfy his creditors and to give him means 
for carrying on his plans. He had meant, after 
sending Tonty on to the Illinois country, to 
return to Canada and settle his affairs. But 
it became negessary, as soon as he landed at 
St. Ignace, to divide his party and send Tonty 
with some of the men to Sault Ste. Marie after 
plunderers who had made off with his goods. 
The others Avould doubtless desert if left any 
length of time without a leader. It was a risk 
also to send his ship back to the colony without 
standing guard over its safety himself. But he 
greatly needed the credit which its load of furs 
would give him. So he determined to send it 
manned as it was, with orders to return to the 
head of Lake Michigan as soon as the cargo was 
safely landed ; while he voyaged down the west 
side of the lake, and Tonty, returning from the 
Sault, came by the east shore. The reunited 
party would then have the Griffin as a kind of 
floating fort or refuge, and by means of it keep 
easily in communication with the settlements. 

La Salle wanted to build a chain of forts from 
Niagara to the mouth of the Mississippi, when 
that could be reached. Around each of these, 
and protected by them, he foresaw settlements 



The Man with the Copper Hand. 51 

of French and Indians, and a vast trade in furs 
and the products of the undeveloped west. Thus 
France wouki acquire a province many times its 
own size. The undertaking was greater than 
conquering a kingdom. Nobody else divined at 
that time the wonderful promise of the west as 
La Salle pictured it. Little attention had been 
paid to the discoveries of Marquette and Jolliet. 
France would have got no benefit from them 
had not La Salle so soon followed on the track 
of missionary and trader, verified what had been 
done, and pushed on. 

He had seen Jolliet twice. The first time 
they met near Niagara, when both were explor- 
ing ; the second time, Jolliet is said to have 
stopped with his maps and papers before they 
were lost at Fort Frontenac, on his return from 
his Mississippi voyage. La Salle, then master 
of Fort Frontenac, must have examined these 
charts and journals with interest. It does not 
appear that the two men were ever very friendly. 
Jolliet was too easily satisfied to please La 
Salle ; he had not the ability to spread France's 
dominion over the whole western wilderness, 
and that was what La Salle was planning to 
do before Marquette and Jolliet set out for the 
Mississippi. 



52 Heroes of the Middle West. 

St. Ignace became once more the starting 
point of an important expedition, though La 
Salle, before sending the Griffin back, sailed in 
her as far as the Bay of Puans, where many of 
his furs were collected. He parted with this 
good ship in September. She pointed her prow 
eastward, and he turned south with fourteen 
men in four canoes, carrying tools, arms, goods, 
and even a blacksmith's forge. 

Through storm, and famine, and peril with 
Indians they labored down the lake, and did 
not reach the place where they were to meet 
Tonty until the first of November. La Salle 
had the three RecoUet friars with him. Though 
one was a man sixty-four years old, he bore, 
with his companions, every hardship patiently 
and cheerfully. The story of priests wlio helped 
to open the wilderness and who carried religion 
to savages is a beautiful chapter of our national 
life. 

Tonty was not at the place where they were 
to meet him. This was the mouth of the St. 
Joseph River, which La Salle named the Miamis. 
The men did not want to w^ait, for they were 
afraid of starving if they reached the Illinois 
country after the Indians had scattered to winter 
hunting grounds. But La Salle would not go on 



The Man ivith the Copper Hand. 53 

until Tonty appeared. He put the men to work 
building a timber stockade, which he called Fort 
Miamis ; thus beginning in the face of discourage- 
ment his plan of creating a line of fortifications. 

Tonty, delayed by lack of provisions and the 
need of hunting, reached Fort Miamis with his 
men in twenty days. But the Griffin did not 
come at all. More than time enough had passed 
for her to reach Fort Niagara, unload her cargo, 
and return. La Salle watched the lake con- 
stantly for her sails. He began to be heavy- 
hearted for her, but he dared wait no longer; 
so, sending two men back to meet and guide 
her to this new post, he moved on. 

Eight canoes carried his party of thirty-three 
people. They ascended the St. Joseph River to 
find a portage to the head waters of the Illinois. 
This brought them within the present state of 
Indiana ; and when they had reached that curve 
of the river where South Bend now stands, they 
left St. Joseph to grope for the Theakiki, or 
Kankakee, a branch called by some Indians the 
Illinois itself. 

La Salle became separated from the party on 
this portage, eagerly and fearlessly scouring the 
woods for the river's beginning. Tonty camped 
and waited for him, fired guns, called, and 



54 Heroes of the Middle West. 

searched; but he was gone all night and until 
the next afternoon. The stars were blotted 
overhead, for a powder of snow thickened the 
air, weirdly illuminating naked trees in the dark- 
ness, but shutting in his vision. It was past 
midnight when he came in this blind circle once 
more to the banks of the St. Joseph, and saw a 
fire glinting through dense bushes. 

"Now I have reached camp," thought La 
Salle, and he fired his gun to let his people know 
he was approaching. Echoes rolled through the 
woods. Without waiting for a shot m reply he 
hurried to the fire. No person was near it. The 
descending snow hissed, caught in the flames. 
Here was a home hearth prepared m the wilder- 
ness, and no welcome to it but silence. La Salle 
called out in every Indian language he knew. 
Dead branches grated, and the stream rustled 
betwixt its edges of ice. A heap of dry grass 
was gathered for a bed under a tree by the fire, 
and its elastic top showed the hollow where a 
man had lain. La Salle put some more wood 
on the fire, piled a barricade of brush around the 
bed, and lay do^vn in a place left warm by some 
strolling Indian whom his gun had frightened 
away. He slept until morning. In the after- 
noon he found his own camp. 



The Man with the Copimr Hand. 55 

From the first thread of the Kankakee ooziiig 
out of swamps to the Indian town on the Illi- 
nois River where Marquette had done his last 
missionary work, was a long canoe journey. It 
has been said the rivers of the New World made 
its rapid settlement possible ; for they were open 
highways, even in the dead of winter guiding 
the explorer by their frozen courses. 

The Illinois tribe had scattered to their hunt- 
ing, and the lodges stood empty. La Salle's 
men were famished for supplies, so he ventured 
to open the covered pits in which the Indians 
stored their corn. Nothing was more precious 
than this hidden grain ; but he paid for what he 
took when he reached the Indians. This was not 
until after New Year's day. He had descended 
the river as far as that expansion now called 
Peoria Lake. 

The Illinois, after their first panic at the 
appearance of strange white men, received La 
Salle's party kindly, fed all with their owti 
fingers, and, as they had done with JoUiet and 
Marquette when those explorers passed them on 
the Mississippi, tried to coax their guests to go 
no farther. They and other Indians who came 
to the winter camp told such tales of danger on 
that great river about which the French knew 



56 Heroes of the Middle West. 

so little, that six of La Salle's men deserted in 
one night. 

This caused him to move half a league beyond 
the Illinois camp, where, on the southern Lank, 
he built a palisaded fort and called it Crevecoeur. 
He was by this time convinced that the Griffin 
was lost. Whether she went down in a storm, 
or was scuttled and sunk by those to whom he 
intrusted her, nothing was ever heard of her 
again. The furs he had sent to pay his credi- 
tors never in any way reached port. If they 
escaped shipwreck, they were stolen by the men 
who escaped with them. 

Nothing could bend La Salle's resolution. He 
meant in some way to explore the west through 
which the southern Mississippi ran. But the 
loss of the Griffin hurt him sorely. He could 
not go on without more supplies ; and having 
no vessel to bring them, the fearful necessity 
was before him of returning on foot and by 
canoe to Fort Frontenac to bring them him- 
self. 

He began to build another ship on the Illinois 
River, aiid needed cables and rigging for her. 
This vessel being partly finished by the first of 
March, he left her and Fort Crevecoeur in 
Tonty's charge, and, taking four Frenchmen 



The Man ivith the Copijev Hand. 57 

and a Mohegaii hunter, set out on the long and 
terrible journey to Fort Frontenac. 

The Italian commandant with the copper hand 
could number on its metal fingers the only men 
to be trusted in his garrison of fifteen. One 
Recollet, Father Louis Hennepin, had been sent 
with two companions by La Salle to explore the 
upper Mississippi. Father Ribourde and Father 
Membre remained. The young Sieur de Bois- 
rondet might also be relied on, as well as a 
Parisian lad named Etienne Renault, and their 
servant L'Esperance. As for the others, smiths, 
shipwrights, and soldiers were ready to mutiny 
any moment. They cared nothing about the 
discovery of the west. They were afraid of La 
Salle when he was with them ; and, though it 
is said no man could help loving Tonty, these 
lawless fellows loved their own wills better. 

The two men that La Salle had sent to look 
for the Grifiin arrived at Fort Crevecoeur, bear- 
ing a message from him, having met him on the 
way. They had no news, but he wrote a letter 
and sent them on to Tonty. He urged Tonty 
to take part of the garrison and go and fortify a 
great rock he had noticed opposite the Illinois 
town. Whatever La Salle wanted done Tonty 
was anxious to accomplish, though separating 



58 Heroes of the Middle West. 

himself from Crevecoeur, even for a day, was a 
dangerous experiment. But he took some men 
and ascended the river to the rock. Straight- 
way smiths, shij^wrights, and soldiers in Creve- 
coeur, seizing powder, lead, furs, and j)ro visions, 
deserted and made their way back to Canada. 
Boisrondet, the friars, and L'Esperance hurried 
to tell Tonty; and thus Fort Crevecoeur and 
the partly finished shii) had to be abandoned. 
Tonty dispatched four men to warn La Salle of 
the disaster. He could neither hold this posi- 
tion nor fortify the rock in the midst of jealous 
savages with two friars, one young officer, a lad, 
and one servant. He took the forge, and tools, 
and all that was left in Crevecoeur into the very- 
heart of the Indian village and built a long 
lodge, shaped like the wigwams of the Illinois. 
This was the only way to put down their sus- 
picion. Seeing that the Frenchmen had come 
to dwell among them, the Indians were pleased, 
and their women helped with poles and mats to 
build the lodge. 

For by this time, so long did it take to cover 
distances in the wilderness, spring and summer 
were past, and the Illinois were dwelling in their 
great town, nearly opposite the rock which La 
Salle desired to have fortified. Tonty often 



The Man ivith the Copper Hand. 59 

gazed at it across the river, which flows south- 
westward there, with a ripple that does not break 
mto actual rapids. The yellow sandstone height, 
rising like a square mountain out of the shore, 
was tufted with ferns and trees. No man could 
ascend it except at the southeast corner, and at 
that place a ladder or a rope was needed by the 
unskillful. It had a flat, grassy top shut in by 
trees, through which one could see the surround- 
ing country as from a tower. A ravine behind 
it was banked and floored with dazzling white 
sand, and walled at the farther side by a timbered 
cliff rising to a prairie. With a score of men 
Tonty could have held this natural fortress 
against any attack. Buckets might be rigged 
from overhanging trees to draw up water from 
the river. Provisions and ammunition only 
were needed for a garrison. This is now called 
Starved Rock, and is nearly opposite the town of 
Utica. Some distance up the river is a longer 
ridge, yet known as Buffalo Rock, easy of ascent 
at one end, up which the savages are said to have 
chased buffaloes ; and precipitous at the other, 
down which the frightened beasts plunged to 
death. 

The tenth day of September a mellow autumn 
sun shone on maize fields where squaws labored. 



60 Heroes of the Middle West. 

on lazy old braves sprawled around buffalo robes, 
gambling with cherry stones, and on peaceful 
lodges above which the blue smoke faintly 
wavered. It was so warm the fires were nearly 
out. Young warriors of the tribes were away 
on an expedition ; but the populous Indian town 
swarmed with its thousands. 

Father Ribourde and Father Membre had 
that morning withdrawn a league up the river 
to make what they called a retreat for prayer 
and meditation. The other Frenchmen were 
divided between lodge and garden. 

Near this living town was the town of the 
dead, a hamlet of scaffolds, where, wrapped in 
skins, above the reach of wolves, Illinois Indians 
of a past generation slept their winters and 
summers away. Crows flapped across them 
and settled on the corn, causing much ado 
among the papooses who were set to shout 
and rattle sticks for the protection of the crop. 

Suddenly a man ran into camp, having just 
leaped from the canoe which brought him across 
the river. When he had talked an instant old 
braves bounded to their feet with furious cries, 
the tribes flocked out of lodges, and women and 
children caught the panic and came screeching. 

"What is the matter?" exclaimed Tonty, 



The Man ivith the Copper Hand. 61 

unable to understand their rapid jargon. The 
Frenchmen drew together with the instinct of 
uniting in peril, and, led by old men, the 
Indian mob turned on them. 

"What is it?" cried Tonty. 

" The Iroquois are coming ! The Iroquois 
are coming to eat us up I These Frenchmen 
have brought the Iroquois upon us I " 

" Will you stand off ! '-' Tonty warned them. 
And every brave in the town knew what they 
called the medicine hand in his right gauntlet, 
powerful and hard as a war club. They stood 
in awe of it as something more than human. 
He put his followers behind him. The French- 
men crowded back to back, facing the savage 
crowd. Hampered by his imperfect knowledge 
of their language, he hearkened intently to the 
jangle of raging voices, his keen dark eyes 
sweeping from face to face. Tonty was a man 
of impressive presence, who inspired confidence 
even in Indians. They held back from slaying 
him and his people, but fiercely accused him. 
Young braves dragged from the French lodge 
the goods and forge saved from Fort Crevecoeur, 
and ran yelling to heave everything into the 
river. 

" The Iroquois are your friends ! The Iroquois 



62 Heroes of the Middle West. 

are at peace with the French ! But they are 
marchmg here to eat us up!" 

"We know nothing about the Iroquois!" 
shouted Tonty. " If they are coming we will 
go out with you to fight them !" 

Only half convinced, but panic-stricken from 
former encounters with a foe who always drove 
them off their land, they turned from threaten- 
ing Tonty and ran to push out their canoes. 
Into these were put the women and children, 
with supplies, and all were paddled down river 
to an island, where guards could be set. The 
warriors then came back and prepared for fight- 
ing. They greased their bodies, painted their 
faces, made ready their weapons, and danced 
and howled to excite one another to courage. 
All night fires along shore, and leaping figures, 
were reflected in the dark river. 

About dawn, scouts who had been sent to 
watch the Iroquois came running with news 
that the enemy were almost in sight across the 
prairie on the opposite side, slipping under cover 
of woods along a small branch of the Illinois 
River. They had guns, pistols, and swords, and 
carried bucklers of rawhide. The scouts declared 
that a Jesuit priest and La Salle himself led 
them. 



The Man ivith the Copper Hand. 63 

The Frenchmen's lives seemed hardly a breath 
long. In the midst of maddened, screeching 
savages Tonty and his men once more stood 
back to back, and he pushed off knives with 
his copper hand. 

" Do you want to kill yourselves ? " he shouted. 
" If you kill us, the French governor will not 
leave a man of you alive ! I tell you Monsieur 
de la Salle is not with the Iroquois, nor is any 
priest leading them ! Do you not remember the 
good Father Marquette? Would such men as 
he lead tribes to fight one another ? If all the 
Iroquois had stolen French clothes, you would 
think an army of Jesuits and Messieurs de la 
Salle were coming against you!" 

'' But some one has brought the Iroquois 
upon us!" 

" I told you before we know nothing about 
the Iroquois! But we will go with you now 
to fight them!" 

At that the Illinois put their knives in their 
belts and ran shouting to throw themselves into 
the canoes. Warfare with American Indians 
was always the rush of a mob, where every one 
acted for himself without military order. 

" It is well the good friars are away making 
their retreat," said Tonty to Boisrondet and 



64 



Heroes of the Middle West. 



Etienne Renault while they paddled as fast as 
they could across the river with the Illinois. 
" Poor old L'Esperance must be making a 
retreat, too." 

" I have not myself seen him since last night," 
Boisrondet remembered. 

"He put out in a canoe when the Indians 
were embarking their women and children," 
said Etienne Renault. " I saw him go." 

And so it proved afterwards. But L'Esper- 
ance had slipped away to bring back Father 
Membre and Father Ribourde to tend the 
wounded and dying. 

Having crossed the river and reached the 
prairie, Tonty and his allies saw the Iroquois. 




Long House of the Iroquois. 

They came prancing and screeching on their 
savage march, and would have been ridiculous 
if they had not been appalling. These Hodeno- 
saunee, or People of the Long House, as they 



The Man icith the Coppei' Hand. ^5 

called themselves, were the most terrible force 
in the New World. Tonty saw at once it would 
go hard with the Illinois nation. Never at any 
time as hardy as their invaders, who by frequent 
attacks had broken their courage, and weakened 
by the absence of their best warriors, they 
wavered in their first charge. 

He put down his gun and offered to carry 
a peace belt to the Iroquois to stop the fight. 
The Illinois gladly gave him a wampum girdle 
and sent a young Indian with him. Boisrondet 
and Etienne Renault also walked at his side 
into the open space between two barbaric 
armies. The Iroquois did not stop firing when 
he held up and waved the belt in his left hand. 
Bullets spattered on the hummocky sod of the 
prairie around him. 

"Go back," Tonty said to Boisrondet and 
Renault and the young Indian. " What need 
is there of so many ? Take the lad back, Bois- 
rondet." 

They hesitated to leave him 

"Go back!" he repeated sharply, so they 
turned, and he ran on alone. The Iroquois 
guns seemed to flash in his face. It was like 
throwing himself among furious wolves. Snarl- 
ing lips and snaky eyes and twisting sinuous 



66 Heroes of the Middle West. 

bodies made nightmares around him. He felt 
himself seized ; a young warrior stabbed him 
in the side. The knife glanced on a rib, but 
blood ran down his buckskins and filled his 
throat. 

"Stop!" shouted an Iroquois chief. "This 
is a Frenchman ; his ears are not pierced." 

Tonty's swarthy skin was blanching with the 
anguish of his wound, which turned him faint. 
His black hair clung in rings to a forehead wet 
with cold perspiration. But he held the wam- 
pum belt aloft and spat the blood out of his 
mouth. 

" Iroquois! The Illinois nation are under the 
protection of the French king and Governor 
Frontenac ! I demand that you leave them 
in peace!" 

A young brave snatched his hat and lifted it 
on the end of a gun. At that the Illinois began 
a frenzied attack, thinking he was killed. Tonty 
was spun around as in a whirlpool. He felt a 
hand in his hair and a knife at his scalp. 

"I never," he thought to himself, "was in 
such perplexity in my life ! " 

" Burn him ! " shouted some. 

" But he is French ! " others cried. " Let 
him go ! " 



The Man with the Copper Hand. 67 

Through all the uproar he urged the peace 
belt and threatened them with France. The 
wholesome dread which Governor Frontenac 
had given to that name had effect on them. 
Besides, they had not surprised the Illinois, 
and if they declared a truce, time would be 
gained to consider their future movements. 

The younger braves were quieted, and old 
warriors gave Tonty a belt to carry back to 
the Illinois. He staggered across the prairie. 
Father Ribourde and Father Membre, who had 
just reached the spot, ran to meet him, and 
supported him as he half fainted from loss of 
blood. 

Tonty and his allies withdrew across the 
river. But the Iroquois, instead of retreating, 
followed. Seeing Avhat must happen, Tonty 
thought it best for the Illinois to give up their 
town and go to protect their women and chil- 
dren, while he attempted as long as possible 
to keep the invaders at bay. Lodges were set 
on fire, and the Illinois withdrew quietly down 
river, leaving some of their men in the bluffs 
less than a league from the town, to bring them 
word of the result. The Frenchmen, partially 
rebuilding their own lodge, which had been 
wrecked when their goods were thrown in the 



68 Heroes of the Middle West. 

river, stood their ground in the midst of insult- 
ing savages. 

For the Iroquois, still determined on war and 
despoiling, opened maize pits, scattering and 
burning the grain ; trampled corn in the fields ; 
and even pulled the dead off their scaffolds. 
They were angry at the French for threatening 
them with that invisible power of France, and 
bent on chasing the Illinois. Yet Tonty was 
able to force a kind of treaty between them and 
the retreating nation, through the men left in 
the bluffs. As soon as they had made it, how- 
ever, they began canoes of elm bark, to follow 
the Illinois down river. 

Two or three days passed, while the French- 
men sat covering the invaded tribe's retreat. 
They scarcely slept at night. Their enemies 
prowled around their lodge or celebrated dances 
on the ruins of the town. The river flowed 
placidly, and the sun shone on desolation and 
on the unaltered ferny buttresses of the great 
rock and its castellated neighbors. Tonty heard 
with half delirious ears the little creatures 
which sing in the grass and fly before man, but 
return to their singing as soon as he passes 
by. The friars dressed and tended his fevered 
wound, and when the Iroquois sent for him to 



The Man with the Copper Hand. 69 

come to a council, Father Membre went with 
him. 

Within the rude fort of posts and poles saved 
from ruined lodges, which the Iroquois had 
built for themselves, adding a ruff of freshly 
chopped trees, the two white men sat down in 
a ring of glowering savages. Six packs of 
beaver skins were piled ready for the oration ; 
and the orator rose and addressed Tonty. 

With the first two the Indian spokesman 
promised that his nation would not eat Count 
Frontenac's children, those cowardly Illinois. 

The next was a plaster to heal Tonty's 
wound. 

The next was oil to anoint him and the 
Recollets, so their joints Avould move easily 
in traveling. 

The next said that the sun was bright. 

And the sixth and last pack ordered the 
French to get up and leave the country. 

When the speaker sat down, Tonty came 
to his feet and looked at the beaver skins 
piled before them. Then he looked around the 
circle of hard weather-beaten faces and rest- 
less eyes, and thanked the Iroquois for their 

gift. 

" But I would know," said Tonty, " how soon 



70 Heroes of the Middle West. 

you yourselves intend to leave the country and 
let the Illmois be m peace ? " 

There was a growl, and a number of the 
braves burst out with the declaration that they 
intended to eat Illinois flesh first. 

Tonty raised his foot and kicked the beaver 
skins from him. In that very way they would 
have rejected a one-sided treaty themselves. 
Up they sprang with drawn knives and drove 
him and Father Membre from the fort. 

All night the French stood guard for fear of 
being surprised and massacred in their lodge. 
At daybreak the chiefs ordered them to go 
without waiting another hour, and gave them 
a leaky boat. 

Tonty had protected the retreat of the Illinois 
as long as he could. With the two RecoUets, 
Boisrondet, young Renault, and L'Esperance, 
and with little else, he set out up the river. 




o ~ 



IV. 

THE UNDESPAIRING NORMAN. 

" The northward current of the eastern shore 
of Lake Michigan and the southward current 
of the western shore," says a writer exact in 
knowledge, "naturally made the St. Joseph 
portage a return route to Canada, and the Chi- 
cago portage an outbound one." But though 
La Salle was a careful observer and must have 
known that what was then called the Chekago 
River afforded a very short carrying to the 
Desplaines or upper Illinois, he saw fit to use 
the St. Joseph both coming and going. 

His march to Fort Frontenac he afterwards 
described in a letter to one of the creditors 
interested m his discoveries. 

"Though the thaws of approaching spring 
greatly increased the difficulty of the way, in- 
terrupted as it was everj^vhere by marshes and 
rivers, to say nothing of the length of the 
journey, which is about five hundred leagues iii 
a direct line, and the danger of meeting Indians 
of four or five different nations, through whose 
71 



72 Heroes of the Middle West. 

country we were to pass, as well as an Iroquois 
army which we knew was commg that way; 
though we must suffer all the time from hunger ; 
sleep on the open ground, and often without 
food ; watch by night and march by day, loaded 
with baggage, such as blanket, clothing, kettle, 
hatchet, gun, powder, lead, and skins to make 
moccasins ; sometimes pushing through thickets, 
sometimes climbing rocks covered with ice and 
snow ; sometimes wading whole days through 
marshes where the water was waist deep or even 
more, — all this did not prevent me from going 
to Fort Frontenac to bring back the things we 
needed and to learn myself what had become of 
my vessel." 

Carry mg their canoes where the river was 
frozen, and finally leaving them hidden near 
where the town of Joliet now stands, La Salle 
and his men pushed on until they reached the 
fort built at the mouth of the St. Joseph. Here 
he found the two voyageurs he had sent to 
search for the Griffin. They said they had been 
around the lake and could learn nothmg of 
her. He then directed them to Tonty, while 
he marched up the eastern shore. This Michi- 
gan region was debatable ground among the 
Indians, where they met to fight; and he left 



The Undesjpairing Norman. 73 

significant marks on the trees, to make prowlers 
think he had a large war party. A dozen 
or twenty roving savages, ready to pounce like 
ferocious wildcats on a camp, always peeled 
white places on the trees, and cut pictures there 
of their totem, or tribe mark, and the scalps 
and prisoners they had taken. They respected 
a company more numerous than themselves, 
and avoided it. 

Stopping to nurse the sick when some fell ill 
of exposure, or to build canoes when canoes 
were needed, La Salle did not reach Fort Niag- 
ara until Easter, and it was May when Fort 
Frontenac came into view. 

No man ever suffered more from treachery. 
Before he could get together the supplies he 
needed, trouble after trouble fell upon him. 
The men that Tonty had sent to tell him about 
the destruction of Fort Crevecoeur were followed 
by others who brought word that the deserters 
had destroyed his forts at the St. Joseph River 
and Niagara, and carried off all the goods. The 
Griffin was certainly lost. And before going 
back to the Illinois country he was obliged to 
chase these fellows and take from them what 
could be recovered. But when everybody else 
seemed to be against him, it was much comfort 



74 Heroes of the Middle West. 

to remember he had a faithful lieutenant while 
the copper-handed Italian lived. 

La Salle gathered twenty-five men of - trades 
useful to him, and another outfit with all that 
he needed for a ship, having made new arrange- 
ments with his creditors; and going by way 
of Michilimackinac, he reached the St. Joseph 
early in November. 

Whenever, in our own day, we see the Kan- 
kakee still gliding along its rocky bed, or the 
solemn Illinois spreading betwixt wooded banks, 
it is easy to imagine a birch canoe just appear- 
ing around a bend, carrying La Salle or Tonty, 
and rowed by buckskin-clad voyageurs. On 
the Kankakee thousands of buffaloes filled the 
plains, and La Salle's party killed many, pre- 
parmg the flesh in dried flakes by smoking it. 

The buffaloes were left behind wdien they 
approached the great town on the Illinois. La 
Salle glanced up at the rock he wanted fortified, 
but no palisade or Frenchman was to be seen. 

" It seems very quiet," he said to the men in 
his canoe, " and we have not passed a hunter. 
There — there is the meadow where the town 
stood ; but where is the town ? " 

Heaps of ashes, charred poles, broken scaf- 
folds, wolves prowling where papooses had 



The Undesjjairing Korwan. 75 

played, crows whirling in black clouds or 
sitting in rows on naked branches, bones, — 
a horrible waste plain had taken the place of 
the town. 

The Frenchmen scattered over it, eagerly 
seeking some trace of Tonty and his compan- 
ions. They labored all day, until the sun set, 
among dreadful sights which they could never 
forget, without finding any clue to his fate. 

They piled charred wood together and made 
a fire and camped among ruins. But La Salle 
lay awake all night, watching the sharp-pointed 
autumn stars march overhead, and suffering 
what must have seemed the most unendurable 
of all his losses. 

Determined not to give up his friend, he rose 
next morning and helped the men hide their 
heavy freight in the rocks, leaving two of them 
to hide with and guard it, and went on down 
the Illinois River. On one bank the retreat of 
the invaded tribe could be traced, and on the 
other the dead camp-fires of the Iroquois who 
had followed them. But of Tonty and his 
Frenchmen there Avas still no sign. 

La Salle saw the ruins of Fort Crevecoeur and 
his deserted vessel. And so searching he came 
to the mouth of the Illinois and saw for the first 



76 Heroes of the Middle West. 

time that river of his ambitions, the Mississippi. 
There he turned back, leaving a letter tied to a 
tree, on the chance of its sometime falling into 
the hands of Tonty. There was nothing to do 
but to take his men and goods from among the 
rocks near the destroyed town and return to 
Fort Miamis, on the St. Joseph, which some of 
his followers had rebuilt. The winter was upon 
them. 

La Salle never sat and brooded over trouble. 
He was a man of action. Shut in with his men 
and goods, and obliged to wait until spring 
permitted him to take the next step, he began 
at once to work on Indian hunters, and to draw 
their tribes towards forming a settlement around 
the rock he meant to fortify on the Illinois. 
Had he been able to attach turbulent voyageurs 
to him as he attached native tribes, his heroic 
life would have ended in success even beyond 
his dreams. Tonty could better deal with 
ignorant men, his military training standing 
him in good stead ; yet Tonty dared scarcely 
trust a voyageur out of his sight. 

While Tonty and La Salle were passing 
through these adventures, the Recollet father, 
Louis Hennepin, and his two companions, sent 
by La Salle, explored the upper Mississippi. 



The UndesiKiiring Norman. 77 

One of these was named Michael Ako ; the 
other, Da Gay, a man from Picardy m France. 

They left Fort Crevecoeur on the last day of 
February, twenty-four hours before La Salle 
started northward, and entered the Mississippi 
on the 12th of March. The great food-stocked 
stream afforded them plenty of game, wild 
turkeys, buffaloes, deer, and fish. The adven- 
turers excused themselves from observing the 
Lenten season set apart by the Church for fast- 
ing ; but Father Hennepin said prayers several 
times a day. He was a great robust Fleming, 
with almost as much endurance as that hardy 
Norman, La Salle. 

They had paddled about a month up river 
through the region where Marquette and Jolliet 
had descended, when one afternoon they stopped 
to repair their canoe and cook a wild turkey. 
Hennepin, with his sleeves rolled back, was 
daubing the canoe with pitch, and the others 
were busy at the fire, when a war whoop, fol- 
lowed by continuous yelling, echoed from forest 
to forest, and a hundred and twenty naked Sioux 
or Dacotah Indians sprang out of boats to seize 
them. It was no use for Father Hennepin to 
show a peace-pipe or offer fine tobacco. The 
Frenchmen were prisoners. And when these 



78 



Heroes of the 3Ilddle West. 




savages learned by questioning with signs, and 
by drawing on the sand with a stick, that the 
Miamis, whom they were pursuing to fight, were 

far eastward out of 
then- reach, three or 
four old warriors laid 
their hands on Hen- 
nepin's shaven crown 
and began to cry and 
howl like little boys. 
The friar in his 
long gray capote or 
hooded garment, 
which fell to his feet, 
girt about the waist 
by a rope called the cord of St. Francis, stood, 
with bare toes showing on his sandals, inclin- 
ing his fat head with sympathy. He took out 
his handkerchief and wiped the old men's faces. 
Du Gay and Ako, in spite of the peril, laughed 
to see him daub the war paint. 

" The good father hath no suspicion that 
these old wretches are dooming him to death," 
said Ako to Du Gay. 

It appeared afterwards that this was what the 
ceremony meant. For several days the French- 
men, carried northward in their captors' boats, 



Totem of the Sioux. 



The Undesjmlring Norman. 79 

expected to die. No calumet was smoked with 
them ; and every night one of the old chiefs, 
named Aquipaguetin, who had lost a son in war 
and formed a particular intention of taking 
somebody's scalp for solace, sat by the prisoners 
stroking them and howling by the hour. One 
night when the Frenchmen were forced to make 
their fire at the end of the camp, Aquipaguetin 
sent word that he meant to finish them without 
more delay. But they gave him some goods 
out of the store La Salle had sent with them, 
and he changed his mind and concluded to wait 
awhile. He carried the bones of one of his dead 
relations, dried and wrapped in skins gaily orna- 
mented witK porcupine-quill work ; and it was 
his custom to lay these bones before the tribe and 
request that everybody blow smoke on them. Of 
the Frenchmen, however, he demanded hatchets, 
beads, and cloth. This cunning old Sioux wanted 
to get all he could before the party reached 
their villages, where the spoil would be divided. 
Nineteen days after their capture the prison- 
ers were brought to a place which is now the 
site of St. Paul in the state of Minnesota, where 
the Sioux disbanded, scattering to their separate 
towns. They had finally smoked the peace- 
pipe Avith the Frenchmen ; and now, fortunately 



80 Heroes of the Middle West. 

without disagreement, portioned their white 
captives and distributed the goods. Father 
Hennepin was given to Aquipaguetin, who 
promptly adopted him as a son. The Flemish 
friar saw with disgust his gold-embroidered 
vestments, which a missionary always carried 
with him for the impressive celebration of 
mass, displayed on savage backs and greatly 
admired. 

The explorers were really in the way of seeing 
as much of the upper Mississippi as they could 
desire. They were far north of the Wisconsin's 
mouth, where white men first entered the great 
river. The young Mississippi, clear as a moun- 
tain stream, gathered many small tributaries. 
St. Peter's joined it from a blue-earth channel. 
This rugged northern world was wonderfully 
beautiful, with valleys and heights and rocks 
and waterfalls. 

The Sioux were tall, well-made Indians, and 
so active that the smaller Frenchmen could 
hardly keep up with them on the march. They 
sometimes carried Du Gay and Ako over streams, 
but the robust friar they forced to wade or swim; 
and when he lagged lame-footed with exhaus- 
tion across the prairies, they set fire to grass 
behind him, obliging him to take to his heels 



The Undesj^airinf/ Norman. 81 

with them or burn. By adoption into the family 
of Aquipaguetin he had a large relationship 
thrust upon him, for the old weeper had many 
wives and children and other kindred. Hen- 
nepin indeed felt that he was not needed and 
might at any time be disposed of. He never 
had that confidence in his father Aquipaguetin 
which a son should repose in a parent. 

He was separated from Ako and Du Gay, 
who were taken to other villages. By the time 
he reached father Aquepaguetin's house he was 
so exhausted, and his legs, cut by ice in the 
streams, were so swollen that he fell do^vn on 
a bear robe. The village was on an island in a 
sheet of water afterwards called Lake Buade. 
Hennepin was kindly received by his new family, 
who fed him as well as they were able, for the 
Sioux had little food when they were not hunt- 
ing. Seeing him so feeble, they gave him an 
Indian SAveating bath, which he found good for 
his health. They made a lodge of skins so tight 
that it would hold heat, and put into it stones 
baked to a white heat. On these they poured 
water and shut Hennepin m the steam until he 
sweated freely. 

The Sioux had two kinds of lodges — one 
somewhat resemblmg those of the Illinois, the 



82 Heroes of the JMiddle West. 

other a cone of poles with skins stretched 
around, called a tepee. 

Father Hennepin did little missionary work 
among these Indians. He suffered much from 
hunger, being a man who loved good cheer. But 
the tribes went on a buffalo hunt in July and 
killed plenty of meat. All that northern world 
was then clothed in vivid verdure. Honey- 
suckles and wild grapevines made the woods 
fragrant. The gentian, which jealously closes 
its blue-fringed cup from the human eye, grew 
close to the lakes. Captive though the French- 
men were, they could not help enjoying the 
evening camp-fire with its weird flickerings 
against the dark of savage forests, the heat- 
lightning which heralded or followed storms, 
the waters, clear, as if filtered through icebergs, 
dashing in foam over mossy rocks. 

They met during the buffalo hunt, and it 
was about this time that some '' spirits," or white 
men, were heard of, coming from Lake Superior. 
These proved to be the great ranger Greysolon 
du Lhut and four other Frenchmen. 

This man, cousin to Tonty, passed nearly his 
whole life in the woods, going from Indian town 
to Indian town, or planting outposts of his 
own in the wilderness. Occasionally he went to 



The Unci esjxii ring Norman. 83 

France, and the king's magnificence at ^"e^- 
sailles was endured by him until he could gain 
some desired point from the colonial minister 
and hurry hack. Tlie government relied on him 
to keep lawless coureurs de hois within hounds, 
and he traded with nearly all the western tribes. 
When Greysolon du Lhut appeared, the Sioux 
treated their prisoners with deference ; and 
from that time Hennepin, Du Gay, and Ako 
went where they pleased. 

They seemed to have had no thought of 
returning to Fort Crevecoeur. In those days 
when each man took his individual life in his 
hands and guarded it in ways which seemed 
best to him, it was often expedient to change 
one's plan of action. About the time that 
Tonty was obliged to abandon Fort Crevecoeur, 
Hennepin and his companions set off eastward 
with Greysolon du Lhut's party. Hennepin 
sailed for France as soon as he could and wrote 
a book about his adventures. It was one of La 
Salle's misfortunes that this friar should finally 
even lay claim to discovering the mouth of the 
Mississippi, adding the glory of that to these 
real adventures on its upper waters. 

The first of March, La Salle, with a number 
of the men he had gathered, started from Fort 



84 Heroes of the IJiddle West. 

Miamis to the Illinois country. The prairies 
were one dazzling expanse of snow, and as the 
party slid along on the broad, flat snowshoes to 
which their feet were strapped, some of them 
were so blinded that the pain in their eyes 
became unendurable. These were obliged to 
camp in the edge of some woods, while the 
rest went on. 

La Salle himself was sitting in darkness while 
the spring sun struck a million sparkles from a 
world yet locked in winter. The wind chilled 
his back, and he spread his hands to the camp 
blaze. In the torment of snow-blindness he 
wondered whether Tonty was treading these 
white wastes, seeking him, or lying dead of 
Indian wounds under the snow crust. The talk 
of the other snow-blinded men, sitting about 
or stretched with their feet to the fire, was lost 
on his ear. Yet his one faithful servant, who 
went with him on all his journeys, could not 
see anything but calm fortitude on his face as 
he lifted it at the approach of snowshoes. 

" I cannot see you, Hunaut," said La Salle. 
" Did you find some pine leaves ? " 

"I found some, monsieur." 

" Steep them as soon as you can for the men's 
eyes." 



The Undespairing Norman. 



85 



" I wish to tell you, monsieur," the man said 
as he went about his task with a snow-filled 
kettle, " that I found also a party of Fox In- 
dians from Green Bay, and they gave me news 
of Monsieur de Tonty." 

Hunaut looked at the long, pale face of his 
master and saw the under lip tremble and 
twitch. 

" You know I am much bound to Monsieur 
de Tonty. Is he alive ? " 

" He is alive, monsieur. He has been obliged 
to pass the winter at Green Bay. Father Hen- 
nepin has also passed through that country on 
his way to Montreal." 

La Salle felt his troubles melt with the un- 
locking of winter. The brief but agonizing 
snow-blindness passed away with a thaw ; and, 
overtaking his other men, he soon met the 
returning Illinois tribe and began the Indian 
settlement around the rock he intended to 
fortify. 

Already the Miami tribe was following him, 
and he drew them into an alliance with the Illi- 
nois, impressively founding the principality soon 
to grow there. This eloquent Norman French- 
man had gifts in height and the large bone and 
sinew of Normandy, which his Indian allies 



86 Heroes of the Middle West. 

always admired. And he well knew where to 
impress his talk with coats, shirts, guns, and 
hunting-knives. As his holdings of land in 
Canada were made his stepping-stones toward 
the west, so the footing he gained at Fort 
Miamis and in the Illinois country was to be 
used in discovering the real course of the Mis- 
sissippi and taking possession of its vast basin. 

It was the end of May before he met Tonty 
at St. Ignace ; Italian and Frenchman coming 
together with outstretched arms and embracing. 
Tonty's black eyes were full of tears, but La 
Salle told his reverses as calmly as if they were 
another man's. 

"Any one else," said Father Membre, who 
stood by, '' would abandon the enterprise, but 
Monsieur de la Salle has no equal for constancy 
of purpose." 

"But where is Father Ribourde?" La Salle 
inquired, missing the other Recollet. 

Tonty told him sorrowfully how Father Ri- 
bourde had gone into the woods when his party 
camped, after being driven up river in a leaky 
boat by the Iroquois ; how they had waited and 
searched for him, and were finally made aware 
that a band of prowling Kickapoos had mur- 
dered him. 



The Undespairing Norman. 87 

Tonty had aimed at Green Bay by the Chi- 
cago portage, and tramped along the west shore 
of Lake Michigan, having found it impossible 
to patch the boat. 

"We were nearly starved," he said; "but 
we found a few ears of corn and some frozen 
squashes in a deserted Indian town. When we 
reached the bay we found an old canoe and 
mended it ; but as soon as we were on the water 
there rose a northwest wind with driving snow, 
which lasted nearly five days. We ate all our 
food, and, not knowing what to do, turned back 
to the deserted town to die by a warm fire in 
one of the wigwams. On the way the bay 
froze. We camped to make moccasins out of 
Father Membre's cloak. I was angry at Etienne 
Renault for not finishing his ; but he excused 
himself on account of illness, having a great 
oppression of the stomach, caused by eating a 
piece of an Indian rawhide shield which he 
could not digest. His delay proved our salva- 
tion, for the next day, as I was urging him to 
finish the moccasins, a party of Ottawas saw the 
smoke of our fire and came to us. We gave 
them such a welcome as never was seen before. 
They took us into their canoes and carried us 
to an Indian village only two leagues off. All 



88 Heroes of the Middle West. 

the Indians took pleasure in sending us food ; 
so, after thirty-four days of starvation, we found 
our famine turned to abundance." 

Tonty and La Salle, with their followers, 
paddled the thousand miles to Fort Frontenac, 
to make another start into the wilderness. 

La Salle was now determined to keep his men 
together. He set down many of his experiences 
and thoughts in letters which have been kept ; 
so we know at this day what was in the great 
explorer's mind, and how dear he held " Mon- 
sieur de Tonty, who is full of zeal." 

On his return to the wilderness with another 
equipment, he went around the head of Lake 
Michigan and made the short Chicago portage 
to the Desplaines River. Entering by this 
branch the frozen Illinois, they dragged their 
canoes on sledges past the site of the town and 
reached open water below Peoria Lake. La 
Salle gave up the plan of building a ship, and 
determined to go on in his canoes to the mouth 
of the Mississippi. 

So, pausing to hunt when game was needed, 
his company of fifty-four persons entered the 
great river, saw the Missouri rushing into it — 
muddy current and clear northern stream flow- 
ing alongside until the waters mingled. They 



The TJndespa'iviiKj Norman. 89 

met and overawed the Indians on both shores, 
building several stockades.- The broad river 
seemed to fill a valley, doubling and winding 
upon itself with innumerable curves, in its 
solemn and lonely stretches. Huge pieces of 
low-lying bank crumbled and fell in with 
splashes, for the Mississippi ceaselessly eats 
away its own shore. 

A hundred leagues below the mouth of the 
Arkansas they came to a swamp on the west 
side. Behind this swamp, they had been told, 
might be found the Arkansas tribe's great town. 
La Salle sent Tonty and Father Membre, with 
some voyageurs, to make friends with the 
Indians and bring him word about the town. 

Tonty had seen nothing like it in the New 
World. The houses were large and square, of 
sun-baked brick, with a dome of canes overhead. 
The two largest were the chiefs house and the 
temple. Doors were the only openings. Tonty 
and the friar were taken in where the chief sat 
on a bedstead with his squaws, and sixty old 
men, in white mulberry bark cloaks, squatted 
by with the dignity of a council. The wives, 
in order to honor the sovereign, yelled. 

The temple was a place where dead chiefs' 
bones were kept. A mud wall built around it 



'90 Heroes of the Middle West. 

was ornamented with skulls. The inside was 
very rough. Something like an altar stood in 
the center of the floor ; and a fire of logs was 
kept burning before it, and never allowed to go 
out, filling the place with smoke, and irritating 
the eyes of two old Indians who tended it in half 
darkness. The Frenchmen were not allowed to 
look into a secret place where the temple treasure 
was kept. But, hearing it consisted of pearls 
and trinkets, Tonty conjectured the Indians 
had got it from the Spanish. This tribe was 
not unlike the Aztecs of Mexico. The chief 
came in barbaric grandeur to visit La Salle, 
dressed in white, having fans carried before 
him, and a plate of burnished copper to repre- 
sent the sun, for these lower Mississippians 
were sun-worshipers. 

With gifts and the grave consideration which 
instantly won Indians, La Salle moved from tribe 
to tribe towards the Gulf. Red River pulsed 
upon the course like a discharging artery. The 
sluggish alligator woke from the ooze and poked 
up his snout at the canoes. "He is," says a 
quaint old writer who made that journey after- 
wards, " the most frightful master-fish that can 
be seen. I saw one that was as large as half a 
hogshead. There are some, they say, as large as 



The Undespairing Norman. 



91 



a hogshead and twelve to fifteen feet long. I 
have no doubt they would swallow up a man if 
they caught him." 

In April La Salle reached his goal. He 
found that the Mississippi divided its current 
into three strands 



and entered the Gulf 
through three mouths. 
He separated his 
party; La Salle took 
the west passage, and 
Tonty and another 
lieutenant the middle 
and the east. At the 
Gulf of Mexico they 
came together again, 
and with solemn cere- 
monies claimed for 
France all the country 
along the great river's 
entire length, and far eastward and westward, 
calling* it Louisiana, in honor of King Louis 
XIV. A metal plate, bearing the arms of 
France, the king's name, and the date of the 
discovery, was fixed on a pillar in the shifting 
soil. 

Hardy as he was, La Salle sometimes fell ill 




La Salle 
at the Mouth of the Mississippi. 



92 Heroes of the Middle West. 

from the great exposures he endured. And more 
than once he was poisoned by some revengeful 
voyageur. It was not until the December fol- 
lowing his discovery of the Mississippi's mouth 
that he realized his plan of fortifying the rock 
on the Illinois River. He and Tonty delighted 
in it, calling it Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. 
Storehouses and quarters for a garrison rose 
around its edges, protected by a palisade. A 
windlass was rigged to draw water from the 
river below. On the northeast corner of the 
rock a low earthwork remains to this day. 

Around this natural castle the Indian tribes 
gathered to La Salle, as to a sovereign, — Miamis, 
Abenakis, and Shawanoes, from countries east- 
ward, and the Illinois returned to spread over 
their beloved meadow. Instead of one town, 
many towns of log, or rush, or bark lodges 
could be seen from the summit of the Rock. 
Years afterwards the French still spoke of this 
fortress as Le Rocher. A little principality of 
twenty thousand inhabitants, strong enough to 
repel any attack of the Iroquois, thus helped to 
guard it. La Salle meant to supply his people 
with goods and give them a market for their 
furs. At this time he could almost see the suc- 
cess of his mighty enterprise assured ; he could 



The Undespairing Norman. 



93 



reasonably count on strengthening his stockades 
along the Mississippi, and on building near its 
mouth a city which would protect the entire 
west and give an outlet to the undeveloped 
wealth of the continent. 

In the flush of his discovery and success La 
Salle went back 
to France, leav- 
ing Tonty in 
charge of the 
Rock and the 
gathering In- 
dian nations, 
and laid his 
actual achieve- 
ments before 
the king, ask- 
ing for help. 
This was made 
necessary by 
the change in 
the colonial 
government, 
which had re- 
moved his friend Count Frontenac and left him 
at the mercy of enemies. 

The king was not slow to see the capacity of 




Louis XIV., King of France. 



94 Heroes of the Middle West. 

this wonderful man, so shy of civilization that 
he lodged in a poor street, carrying with him 
the very breath of the wilderness. La Salle 
asked for two ships ; the king gave him four ; 
and many people and supplies were gathered to 
colonize and stock the west. 

It was La Salle's intention to sail by way of 
the West Indies, cross the Gulf of Mexico, and 
enter the mouth of the Mississippi. But the 
Gulf of Mexico is rimmed with low marshy 
land, and he had never seen the mouth of the 
Mississippi from seaward. His unfamiliarity 
with the coast, or night, or fog cheated him of 
his destination, and the colony was landed four 
hundred miles west of it, in a place called Mata- 
gorda Bay, in Texas, which then belonged to 
the Spaniards. Although at the time of dis- 
covery he had taken the latitude of that exact 
spot where he set the post, he had been unable 
to determine the longitude ; any lagoon might 
be an opening of the triple mouth he sought. 

La Salle's brother, a priest, who sailed with 
him on this voyage, testified afterwards that 
the explorer died believing he was near the 
mouth of the Mississippi. Whatever may have 
been his thoughts, the undespairing Norman 
grappled with his troubles in the usual way. 



The Undespairing Norman. ^ 95 

One of his vessels had been captured by the 
Spanish. Another had been wrecked in the 
bay by seamen who were willing to injure him. 
These contained supplies most needed for the 
colony. The third sailed away and left him ; 
and his own little ship, a gift of the king for 
his use along the coast, was sunk by careless 
men while he was absent searching northward 
for the Mississippi. 

Many of the colonists fell sick and died. Men 
turned sullen and tried to desert. Some went 
hunting and were never seen again. Indians, 
who dare not openly attack, skulked near and 
set the prairie on fire ; and that was a sight of 
magnificence, the earth seeming to burn like a 
furnace, or, far as the eye could follow them, 
billows of flame rushing as across a fire sea. 
But La Salle was wise, and cut the grass close 
around his powder and camp. 

Water, plains, trees combined endlessly, like 
the pieces of a kaleidoscope, to confuse him in 
his search. Tonty was not at hand to take care 
of the colony while he groped for the lost river. 
He moved his wretched people from their camp, 
with all goods saved off the wreck in the bay, 
to a better site for a temporary fort, on rising 
ground. The carpenters proved good for noth- 



96 



Heroes of the Middle West. 



ing. La Salle himself planned buildings and 
marked out mortises on the logs. First a large 
house roofed with hides, and divided into apart- 
ments, was finished to shelter all. Separate 




(>9¥-l6%S 



La Salle's Map of Texas. 

houses were afterwards built for the women and 
girls, and barracks or rougher cells for the men. 
A little chapel was finally added. And when 
high-pointed palisades surrounded the whole. 
La Salle, perhaps thinking of his invincible rock 



The Undespairijig Norman. 97 

on the Illinois and the faithfulness of his copper- 
handed lieutenant guarding it, called this out- 
post also Fort St. Louis. Cannon were mounted 
at the four corners of the large house. As the 
balls were lost, they were loaded with bullets 
in bags. 

Behind, the prairies stretched away to forests. 
In front rolled the bay, with the restless ever- 
heaving motion of the Mexican Gulf. A deli- 
cious salty air, like the breath of perpetual spring, 
blew in, tinglmg the skin of the sulkiest adven- 
turer with delight in this virgin world. Fierce 
northers must beat upon the colonists, and the 
languors of summer must in time follow ; and 
they were homesick, always watching for sails. 
Yet they had no lack of food. Oysters were 
so plentiful in the bay that they could not 
wade without cutting their feet with the shells. 
Though the alligator pushed his ugly snout and 
ridgy back out of lagoons, and horned frogs 
frightened the children, and the rattlesnake was 
to be avoided where it lay coiled in the grass, 
game of all kiuds abounded. Every man was 
obliged to hunt, and every woman and child to 
help smoke the meat. Even the priests took guns 
in their hands. Father Membre had brought 
some buffalo traditions from the Illinois coun- 



98 Heroes of the Middle West 

try. He was of Father Hennepin's opinion that 
this wild creature might be trained to draw the 
plow, and he had faith that benevolence was 
concealed behind its wicked eyes. 

As Father Membre stalked along the prairie 
with the hunters, his capote tucked up out of 
his way on its cord, one of the men shot a buf- 
falo and it dropped. The buffaloes rarely fell 
at once, even when wounded to death, unless 
hit in the spine. Father Membre approached 
it curiously. 

" Come back. Father ! " shouted the hunters. 

Father Membre touched it gently with his 
gun. 

"Run, Father, run !" cried the hunters. 

"It is dead," asserted Father Membre. "1 
will rest my gun across its carcass to steady my 
aim at the other buffaloes." 

He knelt to rest his gun across its back. 

The great beast heaved convulsively to its 
feet and made a dash at the RecoUet. It sent 
him revolving heels over head. But Father 
Membre got up, and, spreading his capote in 
both hands, danced in front of the buffalo to 
head it off from escaping. At that, with a 
bellow, the shaggy creature charged over him 
across the prairie, dropping to its knees and 



The Undespairing Norman. 99 

djdng before the frightened hunters could lift 
the friar from the ground. 

"Are you hurt, Father?" they all asked, sup- 
porting him, and finding it impossible to keep 
from laughing as he sat up, with his reverend 
face skinned and his capote nearly torn off. 

" Not unto death," responded Father Membre, 
brushing grass and dirty hoof prints from his 
garment. " But it hath been greatly impressed 
on my mind that this ox-savage is no fit beast 
for the plow. Nor will I longer counsel our 
women to coax the wild cows to a milking. It 
is well to adapt to our needs the beasts of a 
country," said Father Membre, wiping blood 
from his face. " But this buffalo creature hath 
disappointed me ! " 

La Salle was prostrated through the month 
of November. But by Christmas he was able to 
set out on a final search from Avhich he did not 
intend to return until he found the Mississippi. 
All hands in the fort were busied on the outfit 
necessary for the party. Clothes were made of 
sails recovered from one of the wrecked vessels. 
Eighteen men were to follow La Salle, among 
them his elder brother, the Abbe Cavelier. Some 
had on the remains of garments they had worn 
in France, and others were dressed in deer or 



100 Heroes of the Middle West 

buffalo skins. He had bought five horses of 
the Indians to carry the baggage. 

At midnight on Christmas Eve everybody 
crowded into the small fortress chapel. The 
priests, celebrating mass, moved before the altar 
in such gold-embroidered vestments as they had, 
and the light of torches illuminated the rough 
log walls. Those who were to stay and keep 
the outpost, literally lost in the wilderness, were 
on their knees weeping. Those who were to go 
knelt also, with the dread of an awful uncer- 
tainty in their minds. The faithful ones foresaw 
worse than peril from forests and waters and 
savages, for La Salle could not leave behind all 
the villains with whom he was obliged to serve 
himself. He alone showed the composure of a 
man who never despairs. If he had positively 
known that he was setting out upon a fatal 
journey, — that he was undertaking his last 
march through the wilderness, — the mass lights 
would still have shown the firm face of a man 
who did not turn back from any enterprise. 
The very existence of these people who had 
come out to the New World with him depended 
on his success. Whatever lay in the road he 
had to encounter it. The most splendid lives 
may progress and end through what we call 



The Undespairing Norman. 101 

traged}^; but it is better to die in the very 
stress of achievement than to stretch a poor 
existence through a century. The contagion 
of his hardihood stole out like the Christinas 
incense and spread through the chapel. 



FRENCH SETTLEMENTS. 

" It was the establishment of military posts 
throughout this vast valley that eventually 
brought on a life struggle between the English 
and the French," says a historian. 

At first the only spot of civilization in bound- 
less wilderness was Tonty's little fort on the 
Illinois. Protected by it, the Indians went 
hunting and brought in buffalo skins and meat ; 
their women planted and reaped maize ; children 
were born ; days came and went ; autumn haze 
made the distances pearly; winter snow lay 
on the wigwams ; men ran on snowshoes ; and 
papooses shouted on the frozen river. Still 
no news came from La Salle. 

Tonty had made a journey to the mouth of 
the Mississippi to meet him, after he landed 
with his colony, searching thirty leagues in 
each direction along the coast. La Salle was 
at that time groping through a maze of lagoons 
in Texas. Tonty, with his men, waded swamps 
to their necks, enduring more suffering than 

102 













1/ ffncjrr 



MAP OF THE FRENCH SETTLEMENTS. 



French Settlements. 103 

he had ever endured in his life before. This 
was in February of the year 1686. Finding 
it impossible to reach La Salle, who must be 
wandering somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico, 
Tonty wrote a letter to him, intrusting it to the 
hands of an Indian chief, with directions that it 
be delivered when the explorer appeared. He 
also left a couple of men who were willing to 
wait in the Arkansas villages to meet La Salle. 

Two years passed before those men brought 
positive proof of the undespairing Norman's 
fate. The remnant of the party that started 
with La Salle from Fort St. Louis of Texas 
spent one winter at Fort St. Louis of the 
Illinois, bringing word that they had left their 
leader in good health on the coast. The Abbe 
Cavelier even collected furs in his brother's 
name, and went on to France, carrying his 
secret with him. 

La Salle had been assassinated on the Trinity 
River, soon after setting out on his last deter- 
mined search for the Mississippi. The eight- 
eenth day of March, 1687, some of his brutal 
voyageurs liid themselves in bushes and shot 
him. 

So slowly did events move then, and so 
powerless was man, an atom in the wilderness, 



104 Heroes of the Middle West. 

that the great-hearted Italian, weeping aloud 
in rage and grief, realized that La Salle's bones 
had been bleaching a year and a half before the 
news of his death reached his lieutenant. It 
was not known that La Salle received burial. 
The wretches who assassinated him threw him 
into some brush. It was a satisfaction to Tonty 
that they all perished miserably afterwards ; 
those who survived quarrels among themselves 
being killed by the Indians. 

The undespairing Norman died instantly, 
without feeling or admitting defeat. And he 
was not defeated. Though his colony — includ- 
ing Father Membre, who had been so long with 
him — perished by the hands of the Indians in 
Texas, in spite of Tonty's second journey to 
relieve them, his plan of settlements from the 
great lakes to the mouth of the Mississippi 
became a reality. 

Down from Canada came two of the eleven 
Le Moyne brothers, D 'Iberville and Bienville, 
fine fighting sons of a powerful colonial family, 
with royal permission to found near the great 
river's mouth that city which had been La 
Salle's dream. Fourteen years after La Salle's 
death, while D'Iberville was exploring for a 
site, the old chief, to whom Tonty had given a 



French Settlements. 105 

letter for La Salle, brought it carefully wrapped 
and delivered it into the hands of La Salle's 
more fortunate successor. 

Tonty was associated with Le Moyne D 'Iber- 
ville in these labors around the Gulf. 

Autograph of Le Moyne D'Iberville. 

A long peninsula betwixt the Mississippi and 
Kaskaskia Rivers, known since as the American 
Bottom, lured away Indians from the great town 
on the Illinois. The new settlement founded 
on this peninsula was called Kaskaskia, for one 
of the tribes. As other posts sprung into ex- 
istence. Fort St. Louis was less needed. "As 
early as 1712," we are told, "land titles were 
issued for a common field in Kaskaskia. Traders 
had already opened a commerce in skins and 
furs with the remote post of Isle Dauphine in 
Mobile Bay." Settlements were firmly estab- 
lished. By 1720 the luxuries of Europe came 
into the great tract taken by La Salle in the 
name of King Louis and called Louisiana. 

Twelve years after La Salle's death a mis- 
sionary named St. Cosme (Sant' Come) journeyed 



106 Heroes of the Middle West. 

from Canada in a party guided by Tonty. St. 
Cosme has left this record of the man with the 
copper hand : — 

"He guided us as far as the Arkansas and 
gave us much pleasure on the way, winning 
friendship of some savages and intimidating 
others who from jealousy or desire to plunder 
opposed the voyage; not only doing the duty 
of a brave man but that of a missionary. He 
quieted the voyageurs, by whom he was gener- 
ally loved, and supported us by his example in 
devotion." 

On the Chicago portage a little boy, given 
to the missionary perhaps because he was an 
orphan and the western country offered him 
the best chances in life, started eagerly ahead, 
though he was told to wait. The rest of the 
party, having goods and canoes to carr^^ from the 
Chicago River to the Des Plaines, lost sight of 
him, and he was never seen again. Autumn 
grass grew tall over the marshy portage, but 
they dared not set it afire, though his fate was 
doubtless hidden in that grass. The party 
divided and searched for him, calling and firing 
guns. Three days they searched, and daring to 
wait no longer, for it was November and the 
river ready to glaze with ice, they left him to 



French Settlements. 107 

some Frencli people at the post of Chicago. 
But the child was not found. He disappeared 
and no one ever knew what became of him. 

Like this is Henri de Tonty's disappearance 
from history. The records show him working 
with Le Moyne D'Iberville and Le Moyne de 
Bienville to found New Orleans and Mobile, 
pushing the enterprises which La Salle had 
begun. He has been blamed with the misbe- 
havior of a relative of his, Al^Dhonse de Tonty, 
who got into disgrace at the post of Detroit. 
Little justice has been done to the memory of 
this man, who should not be forgotten in the 
west. So quietly did he slip out of life that his 
burial place is unknown. Some people believe 
that he came back to the Rock long after its 
buildings were dismantled and it had ceased to 
be Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Others say 
he died in Mobile. But it is probable that both 
La Salle and Tonty left their bodies to the 
wilderness which their invincible spirits had 
conquered. 

After the settlement of Kaskaskia a strong 
fortress was built sixteen miles above, on the 
same side of the Mississippi. The king of France 
spent a million crowns strengthening this place, 
which was called Fort Chartres. Its massive 



108 Heroes of the Middle West, 

walls, inclosing four acres, and its buildings and 
arched gateway were like some medieval strong- 
hold strangely transplanted from the Old World. 
White uniformed troops paraded. A village 
sprang up around it. Fort Chartres was the 
center of government until Kaskaskia became 
the first capital of the Illinois territory. Appli- 
cations for land had to be made at this post. 
Indians on the Mississippi, for it was a little 
distance from the shore, heard drumbeat and 
sunset gun, and were proud of going in and 
out of its mighty gateway under the white flag 
of France. 

Other villages began on the eastern bank of 
the river — Cahokia, opposite the present city 
of St. Louis, and Prairie du Rocher, nearer 
Kaskaskia. Ste. Genevieve also was built in 
what is now the state of Missouri, on land which 
then was claimed by the Spaniards. There was 
a Post of Natchitoches on the Red River, as well 
as a Post of Washita on the Washita River. 
Settlements were also founded upon La Fourche 
and Fausse Riviere above New Orleans. 

" The finest country we have seen," wrote 
one of the adventurers in those days, "is all 
from Chicago to the Tamaroas. It is nothing 
but prairie and clumps of wood as far as you 



French Settlements. 109 

can see. The Tamaroas are eight leagues from 
the Illinois." Chicago was a landing place 
and portage from the great lakes long before 
a stockade with a blockhouse was built called 
Fort Dearborn. 

"Mon jolly," wrote the same adventurer, "or 
Mount Jolliet, is a mound of earth on the prairie 
on the right side of the Illinois River as you go 
down, elevated about thirty feet. The Indians 
say at the time of the great deluge one of their 
ancestors escaped, and this little mountain is 
his canoe which he turned over there." 

La Salle had learned from the Iroquois about 
the Ohio River. But the region through which 
it flowed to the Mississippi remained for a long 
while an unbroken wilderness. The English 
settlements on their strip of Atlantic coast, 
howeverj and the French settlements in the 
west, reached gradually out over this territory 
and met and grappled. Whichever power got 
and kept the mastery of the west would get 
the mastery of the continent. 

The territory of Kentucky, like that of 
Michigan, was owned by no tribe of Indians. 
" It was the common hunting and fighting 
ground of Ohio tribes on the north and Chero- 
kees and Chickasaws on the south." 



110 Heroes of the Middle West. 

There was indeed one exception to the unin- 
habited state of all that land stretching betwixt 
the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Vincennes, 
now a town of Indiana, was, after Kaskaskia, 
the oldest place in the west. This isolated post 
is said to have been founded by French sol- 
diers and emigrants. Five thousand acres were 
devoted to the common field. De Vincennes, 
for whom it was named, was a nephew of Louis 
Jolliet. And while it is not at all certain that 
he founded the post, he doubtless sojourned 
there in the Indiana country during his roving 
life. A small stockade on the site of the town 
of Fort Wayne is said to have been built by 
him. 

French settlements began to extend south- 
ward from Lake Erie to the head waters of 
the Ohio, like a chain to check the English. 
Presqu'Isle, now Erie, Pennsylvania, was founded 
about the same time as Vincennes. 

A French settler built his house in an inclo- 
sure of two or three acres. The unvarying 
model was one story high, with porches or 
galleries surrounding it. Wooden walls were 
filled and daubed with a solid mass of what was 
called cat-and-clay, a mixture of mortar and 
chopped straw or Spanish moss. The chimney 



French Settlements, 111 

was of the same materials, shaped by four long 
corner posts, wide apart below, and nearer 
together at the top. 

As fast as chikben grew up and married they 
built their cottages in their father's yard ; and 
so it went on, until with children and grand- 
children and great-grandchildren, a small vil- 
lage accumulated around one old couple. 

The French were not anxious to obtain grants 
of the rich wild land. Every settlement had 
its common field, large or small, as was desired. 
A portion of this field was given to each person 
in the village for his own, and he was obliged 
to cultivate it and raise food for his family. If 
a man neglected his ground, it was taken from 
him. A large tract of land called the common 
pasture was also inclosed for everybody's cattle 
to graze in. 

Sometimes houses were set facing one court, 
or center, like a camp, for defense. But gener- 
ally the French had little trouble with their 
savage neighbors, who took very Idndly to 
them. The story of western settlement is not 
that dreadful story of continual wars with 
Indians which reddens the pages of eastern 
colonies. The French were gay people. They 
loved to dance and hunt and spend their time 



112 Heroes of the Middle West. 

in amusements. While the serious, stubborn 
English were grubbing out the foundations of 
great states on the Atlantic coast, it must be 
confessed these happy folks cared little about 
developing the rich Mississippi valley. 

During all its early occupation this hospitable 
land abounded with game. Though in November 
the buffaloes became so lean that only their 
tongues were eaten, swans, geese, and ducks 
were always plentiful, and the fish could not 
be exhausted. 

On a day in February, people from Kaskaskia 
hurried over the road which then stretched a 
league to the Mississippi, for the town was on 
the Kaskaskia River bank. There were settlers 
in blanket capotes, shaped like friars' frocks, 
with hoods to draw over their heads. If it had 
been June instead of February, a blue or red 
kerchief would have covered the men's heads. 
The dress of an ordinary frontiersman in those 
days consisted of shirt, breech-cloth, and buck- 
skin leggins, with moccasins, and neips, or strips 
of blanket wrapped around the feet for stock- 
ings. The voyageur so equipped could under- 
take any hardship. But in the settlements 
wooden shoes were worn instead of moccasins, 
and garments of texture lighter than buckskin. 



French Settlements. 113 

The women wore short gowns, or long, full 
jackets, and petticoats; and their moccasins 
were like those of squaws, ornamented with 
beautiful quill-work. Their outer wraps were 
not unlike the men's ; so a multitude of blanket 
capotes flocked toward the Mississippi bank, 
which at that time had not been washed away, 
and rose steeply above the water. They had 
all run to see a procession of boats pass by from 
Fort Chartres. 

A little negro had brought the news that the 
boats were in sight. Black slaves were owned 
by some of the French ; and Indian slaves, sold 
by their captors to the settlers, had long been 
members of these patriarchal households. Many 
of them had left their work to follow their mas- 
ters to the river ; the negroes pointing and shout- 
ing, the Indians standing motionless and silent. 

The sun flecked a broad expanse of water, 
and down this shining track rushed a fleet of 
canoes; white uniforms leading, and brick-col- 
ored heads above dusky-fringed buckskins fol- 
lowing close after. This little army waved 
their hands and fired guns to salute the crowd 
on shore. The crowd all jangled voices in ex- 
cited talk, no man listening to what another 
said. 



114 Heroes of the Middle West. 

" See you — there are Monsieur Pierre D'Arta- 
guette and the Chevalier De Vincennes and 
excellent Father Senat in the first boat." 

"The young St. Ange and Sieur Lalande 
follow them." 

" How many of our good Indians have thrown 
themselves into this expedition ! The Chicka- 
saw nation may howl when they see this array ! 
They will be taught to leave the boats from New 
Orleans alone ! " 

" But suppose Sieur De Bienville and his army 
do not meet the Commandant D' Artaguette when 
he reaches the Chickasaw country?" 

" During his two years at Fort Chartres has 
Sieur D' Artaguette made mistakes ? The expe- 
dition will succeed." 

" The saints keep that beautiful boy ! — for 
to look at him, though he is so hardy, Monsieur 
Pierre D' Artaguette is as handsome as a woman. 
I have heard the southern tribes sacrifice their 
own children to the sun. This is a fair company 
of Christians to venture against such devils." 

The Chickasaws, occupying a tract of coun- 
try now stretching across northern Mississippi 
and western Tennessee, were friendly to the 
English and willing to encroach on the French. 
They interrupted river traffic and practiced 




French Settlements. 115 

every cruelty on their prisoners. D'Artaguette 
knew as well as the early explorers that in deal- 
ing with savages it is a fatal policy to overlook 
or excuse their ill-behavior. They themselves 
believed in exact revenge, and despised a foe 
who did not strike back, their insolence becom- 
ing boundless if not 
curbed. So he had 
planned with Le 
Moyne de Bienville 
a concerted attack on 

... p ,1 Autograph of Bienville. 

these allies ot the 

English. Bienville, bringing troops up river 

from New Orleans, was to meet him in the 

Chickasaw country on a day and spot carefully 

specified. 

The brilliant pageant of canoes went on 
down the river, seeming to grow smaller, until 
it dwindled to nothingness in the distance. 

But in the course of weeks only a few men 
came back, sent by the Chickasaws, to tell 
about the fate of their leaders. The troops 
from New Orleans did not keep the appoint- 
ment, arriving too late and then retreating. 
D'Artaguette, urged by his Indians, made the 
attack with such force as he had, and his brave 
array was destroyed. He and the Chevalier 



116 Heroes of the Middle West. 

Vincennes, with Laland, Father Senat, and 
many others, a circle of noble human torches, 
perished at the stake. People lamented aloud 
in Kaskaskia and Cahokia streets, and the white 
flag of France slipped down to half-mast on 
Fort Chartres. 

This victory made the Chickasaw Indians so 
bold that scarcely a French convoy on the river 
escaped them. There is a story that a young 
girl reached the gate of Fort Chartres, starving 
and in rags, from wandering through swamps 
and woods. She was the last of a family arrived 
from France, and sought her sister, an officer's 
wife, in the fort. The Chickasaws had killed 
every other relative ; she, escaping alone, was 
ready to die of exposure when she saw the flag 
through the trees. 

But another captain of Fort Chartres, no 
bolder than young Pierre D'Artaguette, but 
more fortunate, named Neyon de Villiers, twenty 
years afterwards led troops as far east as the 
present state of Pennsylvania, and helped his 
brother, Coulon de Villiers, continue the strug- 
gle betwixt French and English by defeating, 
at Fort Necessity, the English commanded by 
a young Virginia officer named George Wash- 
ington. 











--^---^^ 




V 5g^" r^. 



VI. 

THE LAST GREAT INDIAN. 

The sound of the Indian drum was heard on 
Detroit River, and humid May night air carried 
it a league or more to the fort. All the Potta- 
watomies and Wyandots were gathered from 
their own villages on opposite shores to the Ot- 
tawas on the south bank, facing Isle Cochon. 
Their women and children squatted about huge 
fires to see the war dance. The river strait, so 
limpidly and transparently blue in daytime, that 
dipping a pailful of it was like dipping a pailful 
of the sky, scarcely glinted betwixt darkened 
woods. 

In the center of an open space, which the 
camp-fires were built to illuminate, a painted 
post was driven into the ground, and the war- 
riors formed a large ring around it. Their moc- 
casined feet kept time to the booming of the 
drums. With a flourish of his hatchet around 
his head, a chief leaped into the ring and 
began to chase an imaginary foe, chanting his 
own deeds and those of his forefathers. He 
117 



118 Heroes of the Middle West. 

was a muscular rather than a tall Indian, with 
high, striking features. His dark skin was col- 
ored by war paint, and he had stripped himself 
of everything but ornaments. Ottawa Indians 
usually wore brilliant blankets, while Wyandots 
of Sandusky and Detroit paraded in painted 
shirts, their heads crowned with feathers, and 
their leggins tinkling with little bells. The 
Ojibwas, or Chippewas, of the north carried 
quivers slung on their backs, holding their 
arrows. 

The dancer in the ring was the Ottawa chief, 
Pontiac, a man at that time fifty years old, who 
had brought eighteen savage nations under his 
dominion, so that they obeyed his slightest word. 
With majestic sweep of the limbs he whirled 
through the pantomime of capturing and scalp- 
ing an enemy, struck the painted post with his 
tomahawk, and raised the awful war whoop. 
His young braves stamped and yelled with him. 
Another leaped into the ring, sung his deeds, 
and struck the painted post, warrior after war- 
rior following, until a wild maze of sinewy fig- 
ures swam and shrieked around it. Blazing 
pine knots stuck in the ground helped to show 
this maddened whirl, the very opposite of the 
peaceful, floating calumet dance. Boy papooses. 



The Last Great Indian. 119 

watching it, yelled also, their black eyes kin- 
dling with full desire to shed blood. 

Perhaps no Indian there, except Pontiac, 
understood what Avas beginning with the war 
dance on that May night of the year 1763. He 
had been laying his plans all winter, and send- 
ing huge black and purple wampum belts of 
war, and hatchets dipped in red, to rouse every 
native tribe. All the Algonquin stock and the 
Senecas of the Iroquois were united with him. 
From the small oven-shaped hut on Isle Cochon, 
where he lived with his squaws and children, 
to Michilimackinac, from Michilimackinac to 
the lower Mississippi, and from the eastern end 
of Lake Erie down to the Ohio, the messengers 
of this self-made emperor had secretly carried 
and unfolded his plan, which was to rise and 
attack all the English forts on the same day, 
and then to destroy all the English settlers, 
sparing no white people but the French. 

Two years before, an English army had come 
over to Canada and conquered it. That was a 
deathblow to French settlements in the middle 
west. They dared no longer resist English colo- 
nists pushing on them from the east. All that 
chain of forts stretching from Lake Erie down 
to the Ohio — Presqu' Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, 



120 



Heroes of the Middle West. 




The White Flag of France. 



Ligonier — had been given up to the English, 
as well as western posts — Detroit, Fort Miami, 

Ouatanon on 
the Wabash, 
and Michili- 
mackinac. The 
settlements on 
the Mississippi, 
however, still 
displayed the 
white flag of 
France. So 
large was the dominion in the New World which 
England now had the right to claim, that she 
was unable to grasp it all at once. 

The Indians did not like the English, who 
treated them with contempt, would not offer 
them presents, and put them in danger of star- 
vation by holding back the guns and ammu- 
nition, on which they had learned to depend, 
instead of their bows and arrows. For two 
years they had borne the rapid spread of English 
settlements on land which they still regarded as 
their own. These intruders were not like the 
French, who cared nothing about claiming land, 
and were always ready to hunt or dance with 
their red brethren. 



The Last Great Indian. 121 

All the tribes were, therefore, eager to rise 
against the English, whom they wanted to drive 
back into the sea. Pontiac himself knew this 
could not be done ; but he thought it possible, 
by striking the English forts all at once, to re- 
store the French power and so get the French 
to help him in fighting back their common foe 
from spreading into the west. 

Pontiac was the only Indian who ever seemed 
to realize all the dangers which threatened his 
race, or to have military skill for organizing 
against them. His work had been secret, and 
he had taken pains to appear very friendly to 
the garrison of Detroit, who were used to the 
noise of Indian yelling and dancing. This fort 
was the central point of his operations, and he 
intended to take it next morning by surprise. 

Though La Motte Cadillac was the founder 
of a permanent settlement on the west shore of 
Detroit River, it is said that Greysolon du Lhut 
set up the first palisades there. About a hun- 
dred houses stood crowded together within the 
wooden wall of these tall log pickets, which 
were twenty-five feet high. The houses were 
roofed with bark or thatched with straw. The 
streets were mere paths, but a wide road went 
all around the town next to the palisades. De- 



122 Heroes of the Middle West. 

troit was almost square in shape, with a bastion, 
or fortified projection, at each corner, and a block- 
house built over each gate. The river almost 
washed the front palisades, and two schooners 
usually anchored near to protect the fort and 
give it communication with other points. Be- 
sides the homes of settlers, it contained barracks 
for soldiers, a council-house, and a little church. 

About a hundred and twenty English soldiers, 
besides fur traders and Canadian settlers, were 
in this inclosure, which was called the fort, to 
distinguish it from the village of French houses 
up and down the shore. Dwellers outside had 
their own gardens and orchards, also surrounded 
by pickets. These French people, who tried to 
live comfortably among the English, whom they 
liked no better than the Indians did, raised fine 
pears and apples and made wine of the wild 
grapes. 

The river, emptying the water of the upper 
lakes into Lake Erie, was about half a mile 
wide. Sunlight next morning showed this 
blue strait sparkling from the palisades to the 
other shore, and trees and gardens moist with 
that dewy breath which seems to exhale from 
fresh-water seas. Indians swarmed early around 
the fort, pretending that the young men were 



The Last Great Indian. 123 

that day going to play a game of ball in the 
fields, while Pontiac and sixty old chiefs came 
to hold a council with the English. More 
than a thousand of them lounged about, ready 
for action. The braves were blanketed, each 
carrying a gun with its barrel filed off short 
enough to be concealed under his blanket. 

About ten o'clock Pontiac and his chiefs 
crossed the river in birch canoes and stalked 
in Indian file, every man stepping in the tracks 
of the man before him, to the fort gates. The 
gates on the water side usually stood open until 
evening, for the English, contemptuously care- 
less of savages, let squaws and warriors come 
and go at pleasure. They did not that morning 
open until Pontiac entered. He found himself 
and his chiefs walking betwixt files of armed 
soldiers. The gates were shut behind him. 

Pontiac was startled as if by a sting. He 
saw that some one had betrayed his plan to the 
officers. Even fur traders were standing under 
arms. To this day it is not known who secretly 
warned the fort of Pontiac's conspiracy; but 
the most reliable tradition declares it to have 
been a young squaw named Catherine, who 
could not endure to see friends whom she loved 
put to death. 



124 Heroes of the Middle West. 

It flashed through Pontiac's mind that he 
and his followers were now really prisoners. 
The captain of Detroit was afterwards blamed 
for not holding the chief when he had him. 
The tribes could not rush through the closed 
gates at Pontiac's signal, which was to be the 
lifting of a wampum belt upside down, with all 
its figures reversed. But the cunning savage 
put on a look of innocence and inquired : — 

" My. father," using the Indian term of respect, 
" why are so many of your young men standing 
in the street with their guns?" 

" They have been ordered out for exercise 
and discipline," answered the officer. 

A slight clash of arms and the rolling of 
drums were heard by the surprised tribes wait- 
ing in suspense around the palisades. They 
did not know whether they would ever see their 
leader appear again. But he came out, after 
going through the form of a council, mortified 
by his failure to seize the fort, and sulkily 
crossed the river to his lodge. All his plans to 
bring warriors inside the palisades were treated 
with contempt by the captain of Detroit. Pon- 
tiac wanted his braves to smoke the calumet 
with his English father. 

" You may come in yourself," said the officer, 



The Last Great Indian. 125 

" but the crowd you have with you must remain 

outside." 

"I want all my young men," urged Pon- 
tiac, "to enjoy the fragrance of the friendly 
calumet." 

" I will have none of your rabble in the fort," 

said the ofhcer. 

Raging like a wild beast, Pontiac then led 
his people in assault. He threw off every pre- 
tense of friendliness, and from all directions 
the tribes closed around Detroit in a general 
attack. Though it had wooden walls, it was 
well defended. The Indians, after their first 
fierce onset, fighting in their own way, behind 
trees and sheltered by buildings outside the fort, 
were able to besiege the place indefinitely with 
comparatively small loss to themselves ; while 
the garrison, shut in almost without warning, 
looked forward to scarcity of provisions. 

All English people caught beyond the walls 
were instantly murdered. But the French set- 
tlers were allowed to go about their usual 
affairs unhurt. Queer traditions have come 
down from them of the pious burial they gave 
to English victims of the Indians. One old 
man stuck his hands out of his grave. The 
French covered them with earth. But next 



126 Heroes of the Middle West. 

time they passed that way they saw the stiff, 
entreating hands, like pale fungi, again thrust 
into view. At this the horrified French settlers 
hurried to their priest, who said the neglected 
burial service over the grave, and so put the 
poor Englishman to rest, for his hands pro- 
truded no more. 

One of the absent schooners kept for the use 
of the fort had gone down river with letters and 
dispatches. Her crew knew nothing of the siege, 
and she narrowly escaped capture. A convoy 
of boats, bringing the usual spring supplies, was 
taken, leaving Detroit to face famine. Yet it 
refused to surrender, and, in spite of Pontiac's 
rage and his continual investment of the place, 
the red flag of England floated over that for- 
tress all summer. 

Other posts were not so fortunate in resisting 
Pontiac's conspiracy. Fort Sandusky, at the 
west end of Lake Erie ; Fort Ouatanon, on the 
Wabash, a little south of where Lafayette, in 
the state of Indiana, now stands ; Fort Miami, 
Presqu' Isle, Le Bceuf, Venango, on the eastern 
border, and Michilimackinac, on the straits, were 
all taken by the Indians. 

At Presqu' Isle the twenty-seven soldiers 
went into the blockhouse of the fort and pre- 



The Last Great Indian. 127 

pared to hold it, lining and making it bullet- 
proof. 

A blockhouse was built of logs, or very thick 
timber, and had no windows, and but one door 
in the lower story. The upper story projected 
several feet all around, and had loopholes in 
the overhanging floor, through which the men 
could shoot down. Loopholes were also fixed 
in the upper walls, wide within, but closing to 
nari'ow slits on the outside. A sentry box or 
lookout was sometimes put at the top of the 
roof. With the door barred by iron or great 
beams of wood, and food and ammunition 
stored in the lower room, men could ascend a 
ladder to the second story of a blockhouse and 
hold it against great odds, if the besiegers did 
not succeed in burning them out. 

Presqu' Isle was at the edge of Lake Erie, 
and the soldiers brought in all the water they 
could store. But the attacking Indians made 
breastworks of logs, and shot burning arrows 
on the shingle roof. All the water barrels 
were emptied putting out fires. While some 
men defended the loopholes, others dug under 
the floor of the blockhouse and mined a way 
below ground to the well in the fort where 
Indians swarmed. Buildings in the inclosure 



128 Heroes of the Middle West. 

were set on fire, but the defenders of the block- 
house kept it from catching the flames by tear- 
ing off shingles from the roof when they began 
to burn. The mining party reached the well, 
and buckets of water were drawn up and passed 
through the tunnel to the blockhouse. Greatly 
exhausted, the soldiers held out until next day, 
when, having surrendered honorably, they were 
all taken prisoners as they left the scorched and 
battered log tower. For savages were such 
capricious and cruel victors that they could 
rarely be depended upon to keep faith. Pon- 
tiac himself was superior to his people in such 
matters. If he had been at Presqu' Isle, the 
garrison would not have been seized after 
surrendering on honorable terms. However, 
these soldiers were not instantly massacred, as 
other prisoners had been in war betwixt French 
and English, when savage allies could not be 
restrained. 

Next to Detroit the most important post was 
Michilimackinac. 

This was not the island in the straits bearing 
that name, but a stockaded fort on the south 
shore of Michigan, directly across the strait 
from St. Ignace. To this day, searching along 
a beach of deep, yielding sand, so different from 



The Last Great Indian. 129 

the rocky strands of the islands, you may find 
at the forest edge a cellar where the powder 
house stood, and fruit trees and gooseberry 
bushes from gardens planted there more than 
two hundred years ago. 

MichiUmackinac, succeeding St. Ignace, had 
grown in importance, and was now a stockaded 
fort, having French houses both within and out- 
side it, like Detroit. After Father Marquette's 
old mission had been abandoned and the build- 
ings burned, another small mission was begun 
at L' Arbre Croche, not far west of Fort Michil- 
imackinac, such of his Ottawas as were not scat- 
tered being gathered here. The region around 
also was full of Chippewas or Ojibwas. 

All these Indians hated the English. Some 
came to the fort and said to a young English 
trader named Alexander Henry, who arrived 
after the white flag was hauled down and the 
red one about to be hoisted : — 

" Englishman, although you have conquered 
the French, you have not conquered us. We 
are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods 
and mountains were left to us by our ancestors. 
They are our inheritance, and we will part with 
them to none! " 

Though these Ottawas and Chippewas were 



130 Heroes of the 3Iiddle West. 

independent of those about Detroit, they had 
eagerly taken hold of Pontiac's war belt. The 
missionary priest was able for a while to restrain 
the Ottawas. The Chippewas, gathered in from 
their winter's hunting, determined to strike the 
first blow. 

On the fourth day of June, which was the 
English king's birthday, they came and invited 
the garrison to look at a game of ball, or baggat- 
taway, which they were going to play on the 
long sandy beach, against some Sac Indians. 
The fortress gates stood open. The day was 
very warm and discipline was relaxed. Nobody 
noticed that squaws, flocking inside the fort, 
had tomahawks and scalping knives hidden 
under their blankets, though a few Englishmen 
afterward remembered that the squaws were 
strangely huddled in wrappings on a day hot 
for that climate. 

The young English trader, Alexander Henry, 
has left a careful account of the massacre at Fort 
Michilimackinac. He did not go out to see the 
ball game, because he had important letters to 
write and send by a canoe just starting to Can- 
ada. Officers and men, believing the red tribes 
friendly, lounged about unarmed. Whitewashed 
French houses shone in the sun, and the surge 



The Last Great Indian. 131 

of the straits sounded peacefully on the beach. 
Nobody could dream that when the shouting 
Indians drove the ball back from the farthest 
stake, their cries would suddenly change to 
war whoops. 

At that horrid yell Henry sprang up and ran 
to a window of his house. He saw Chippewas 
filling the fort, and with weapons snatched from 
the squaws, cutting down and scalping Eng- 
lishmen. He caught his own gun from its 
rack, expecting to hear the drum beat to arms. 
But the surprised garrison were unable even to 
sound an alarm. 

Seeing that not a Frenchman was touched, 
Henry slipped into the house of his next neigh- 
bor, a Canadian named Langlade. The whole 
family were at the front windows, looking at 
the horrible sights in the fort ; but an Indian 
slave, a Pani, or Pawnee woman, beckoned to 
him and hid him in the attic, locking the dooi 
and carrying away the key. 

The attic probably had one or two of those 
tunnel-like dormer windows built in the curv- 
ing roof of all French houses. Henry found 
a place where he could look out. He saw his 
countrymen slaughtered without being able to 
help them, and it was like a frightful night- 



132 Heroes of the Middle West. 

mare from which there was to be no awaken- 
ing. Presently the cry rose : — 

"All is finished ! " 

Then the Indians crowded into Langlade's 
house and inquired whether any Englishmen 
were hid there. So thin was the attic floor of 
planks laid across joists, that Henry could hear 
every word. 

"I cannot say," ansAvered the Frenchman. 
" You may examine for yourselves." 

Henry looked around the attic for some place 
to hide in. Moccasined feet were already com- 
ing upstairs. Savage hands shook the attic door, 
and impatient guttural voices demanded the 
key. While some one went for the key, Henry 
crept into a kind of tunnel made by a heap of 
birch-bark vessels, used in the maple-sugar sea- 
son. The door was opening before he could 
draw himself quite out of sight, and though the 
pile was in a dark corner, he dreaded displacing 
some of the birch troughs and making a noise. 

The Indians trod so close to him he thought 
they must hear him breathe. Their bodies were 
smeared with blood, which could be seen through 
the dusk ; and while searching they told Mon- 
sieur Langlade how many Englishmen they had 
killed and the number of scalps they had taken. 



The Last Great Indian. 133 

Not finding any one, they went away and the 
door was again locked. Henry crept out of hid- 
ing. There was a feather bed on the floor and 
he stretched himself on it, so worn out by what 
he had seen and endured that he fell asleep. 

He was roused by the door opening again. 
Madame Langlade came in, and she was sur- 
prised and frightened at finding him. It was 
nearly night and a fierce summer rain beat 
upon the roof, dripping through cracks of 
the heat-dried bark. Madame Langlade had 
come to stop a leak. She told Henry that 
all the English except himself were killed, 
but she hoped he would escape. She brought 
him some water to drink. 

As darkness came on, he lay thinking of his 
desperate state. He was four hundred miles 
from Detroit, which he did not then know was 
besieged, and with all his stores captured or 
destroyed by the Indians, he had no provisions. 
He could not stay where he was, and if he ven- 
tured out, the first red man who met him would 
kill him. 

By morning the Indians came to the house 
inquiring for Henry, whom they had missed. 
Madame Langlade was in such fear that they 
might kill her children if they found Henry 



134 Heroes of the Middle West. 

sheltered in the house, that she told her hus- 
band where he was and begged to have him 
given up. This the Frenchman at first refused 
to do ; but he finally led the Indians again to 
the attic. 

Henry stood up, expecting to die. 

The Indians were all partially drunk and 
had satisfied themselves with slaughter. One 
of them seized Henry by the collar and lifted a 
knife to plunge into his breast. White man 
and red man looked intently at each other, and 
the savage, perhaps moved by the fearless de- 
spair in the young Englishman's eyes, concluded 
to take him prisoner. Henry began to think he 
could not be killed. 

He found that the captain and lieutenant of 
Michilimackinac were also alive and prisoners 
like himself. The missionary priest was doing 
all he could to restrain his maddened flock. At 
a council held between Chippewas and Otta- 
was, Henry was bought with presents by a Chip- 
pewa chief named Wawatam, who loved him, 
and who had been absent the day of the attack. 
Wawatam put Henry in his canoe, carried him 
across the strait to Michilimackinac Island, and 
hid him in a cave, which is now called Skull 
Rock by the islanders, because Henry found 



The Last Great Indian. 135 

ancient skulls and bones in the bottom of it. 
As the island was held sacred by the Indians, 
this was probably one of their old sepulchres. 
Its dome top is smothered in a tangle of ever- 
greens and brush. There is a low, triangular 
entrance, and the hollow inside is shaped like 
an elbow. More than one island boy has since 
crept back to the dark bend Avhere Henry lay 
hidden on the skulls, but only a drift of damp 
leaves can be found there now. 

The whole story of Alexander Henry's ad- 
ventures, before he escaped and returned safely 
to Canada, is a wonderful chapter in western 
history. 

The Indians were not guilty of all the cru- 
elties practiced in this war. Bounties were 
offered for savage scalps. One renegade Eng- 
lishman, named David Owen, came back from 
adoption and marriage into a tribe, bringing the 
scalps of his squaw wdfe and her friends. 

Through the entire summer Pontiac was suc- 
cessful in everj^thing except the taking of De- 
troit. He besieged it from May until October. 
With autumn his hopes began to dwindle. He 
had asked the French to help him, and re- 
fused to believe that their king had made a 
treaty at Paris, giving up to the English all 



136 



Heroes of the Middle West. 



French claims in the New World east of the 
Mississippi. His cause was lost. He could 
band unstable warriors together for a common 

good, but he 
could not con- 
trol politics in 
Europe, nor de- 
fend a people 
given up by 
their sover- 
eign, against 
the solidly ad- 
vancing Eng- 
lish race. 
But he was 
unwilling to own himself defeated while the 
French flag waved over a foot of American 
ground. This clever Indian, needing supplies 
to carry on his war, used civilized methods to 
get them on credit. He gave promissory notes 
written on birch bark, signed with his own 
totem, or tribe-mark — a picture of the otter. 
These notes were faithfully paid. 

When he saw his struggle becoming hopeless 
eastward, he drew off to the Illinois settlements 
to fight back the English from taking posses- 
sion of Fort Chartres, the last French post. 




North America at Close of French Wars, 1763. 



The Last Great Indian. 137 

They might come up the Mississippi from New 
Orleans, or they might come down the Ohio. 
The Iroquois had always called the Mississippi 
the Ohio, considering that river which rose 
near their own country the great river, and 
the northern branch merely a tributary. 

Pontiac ordered the Illinois Indians to take 
up arms and stand by him. 

" Hesitate not," he said, " or I will destroy 
you as fire does the prairie grass ! These are 
the words of Pontiac." 

They obeyed him. He sent more messengers 
down as far as New Orleans, keeping the tribes 
stirred against the English. He camped with 
his forces around Fort Chartres, cherishing it 
and urging the last French commandant, St. 
Ange de Bellerive, to take up arms with him, 
until that poor captain, tormented by the savage 
mob, and only holding the place until its Eng- 
lish owners received it, was ready to march out 
with his few soldiers and abandon it. 

It is told that while Pontiac was leading his 
forlorn hope, he made his conquerors ridiculous. 
Major Loftus with a detachment of troops came 
up the Mississippi to take possession according 
to treaty. Pontiac turned him back. Captain 
Pittman came up the river. Pontiac turned him 



138 Heroes of the Middle West. 

back. Captain Morris started from Detroit, and 
Pontiac squatted defiantly in his way. Lieuten- 
ant Frazer descended the Ohio. Pontiac caught 
him and shipped him to New Orleans by canoe. 
Captain Croghan was also stopped near Detroit. 
Both French and Spanish people roared with 
laughter at the many failures of the coming 
race to seize what had so easily been obtained 
by treaty. 

Two years and a half passed between Pon- 
tiac's attack on Detroit and the formal sur- 
render of Fort Chartres. The great war chief's 
heart, with a gradual breaking, finally yielded 
before the steadily advancing and all-conquering 
people that were to dominate this continent. 

The second day of winter, late in the after- 
noon, Pontiac went into the fort unattended by 
any warrior, and without a word sat down near 
St. Ange de Bellerive in the officers' quarters. 
Both veteran soldier and old chief knew that 
Major Farmar, with a large body of troops, was 
almost in sight of Fort Chartres, coming from 
New Orleans. Perhaps before the low winter 
sun was out of sight, cannon mounted on one 
of the bastions would have to salute the new 
commandant. Sentinels on the mound of Fort 
Chartres could see a frosty valley, reaching to 



The Last Great Indian. 139 

the Mississippi, glinting in the distance. That 
alluvial stretch was, in the course of years, to 
be eaten away by the river even to the bastions. 
The fort itself, built at such expense, would 
soon be abandoned by its conquerors, to sink, 
piecemeal, a noble and massive ruin. The dome- 
shaped powder house and stone quarters would 
be put to ignoble uses, and forest trees, spread- 
ing the spice of walnut fragrance, or the dense 
shadow of oaks, would grow through the very 
room where St. Ange and Pontiac sat. Indians, 
passing by, would camp in the old place, for- 
getting how the last hope of their race had 
clung to it. 

The Frenchman partly foresaw these changes, 
and it was a bitter hour to him. He wanted to 
have it over and to cross the Mississippi, to a 
town recently founded northward on the west 
shore, where many French settlers had collected, 
called St. Louis. This was then considered 
Spanish ground. But if the French king de- 
serted his American colonies, why should not 
his American colonists desert him? 

" Father," spoke out Pontiac, with the usual 
Indian term of respect, " I have always loved 
the French. We have often smoked the cal- 
umet together, and we have fought battles 



140 Heroes of the Middle West. 

together against misguided Indians and the 
English dogs." 

St. Ange de Bellerive looked at the dejected 
chief and thought of Le Moyne de Bienville, 
now an old man living in France, who was said 
to have wept and implored King Louis on his 
knees not to give up to the English that I'ich 
western domain which Marquette and Jolliet 
and La Salle and Tonty and many another 
Frenchman had suffered to gain, and to secure 
which he himself had given his hest years. 

" The chief must now bury the hatchet," he 
answered quietly. 

" I have buried it," said Pontiac. " I shall 
lift it no more." 

" The English are willing to make peace with 
him, if he recalls all his wampum belts of war." 

Pontiac grinned. " The belts are more than 
one man can carry." 

"Where does the chief intend to go when he 
leaves this post? " 

Pontiac lifted his hand and pointed east, west, 
north, south. He would have no settled abode. 
It was a sign that he relinquished the inher- 
itance of his fathers to an invader he hated. 
His race could not live under the civilization of 
the Anglo-Saxon. He would have struck out 



The Last Great Indian. 141 

to the remotest wilderness, had he foreseen to 
what a burial place his continual clinging to 
the French would bring him. For Pontiac was 
assassinated by an Illinois Indian, whom an Eng- 
lish trader had bribed, and his body lies some- 
where to-day under the pavements of St. Louis, 
English-speaking men treading constantly over 
him. But if the dead chiefs ears could hear, 
he would catch also the sound of the beloved 
French tongue lingering there. 

A cannon thundered from one of the bastions. 
St. Ange stood up, and Pontiac stood up with 
him. 

"The English are in sight," said St. Ange 
de Bellerive. " That salute is the signal for the 
flag of France to be lowered on Fort Chartres." 



ADVERTISEMENTS 



REFERENCE BOOKS IN HISTORY 



Guide to the Study of American History. — By Edward Channing 
and Albert Bushnell Hart, Assistant Professors of History, 
Harvard University, f^or introduction, j^2.oo. 

Method in History. — By William H. Mace, Professor of History in 
Syracuse University. For introduction, $i.oo. 

A Short Constitutional History of England. — By H. St. Clair 
Feilden, late of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Eng. Revised 
and in part rewritten by W. Gray Etheridge, late scholar of 
Keble College. For introduction, $1.25. 

The Study of Mediaeval History by the Library Method. — By M. S. 
Getchell, Teacher of History in the English High School, 
Somerville, Mass. For introduction, 50 cents. 

A Guide to the Study of the History and the Constitution of the 
United States. — By W. W. Rupert, Superintendent of Schools, 
Pottstown, Pa. For introduction, 70 cents. 

Reference History of the United States. — By Hannah A. Davidson. 
For introduction, 80 cents. 

The Reader's Guide to English History. — By William F. Allen, 
late Professor in the University of Wisconsin. For introduc- 
tion, 25 cents. 

Droysen's Outline of the Principles of History. — Translated by E. 
Benjamin Andrews, President of Brown University. For intro- 
duction, $1.00. 

Reference Handbook of English History. — For Readers, Students, 
and Teachers of English History. By E. H. Gurney. For 
introduction, 75 cents. 

Halsey's Genealogical and Chronological Chart of the Rulers of 
England, Scotland, France, Germany, and Spain. — By C. S. 

Halsey, recently Principal of Union Classical Institute, Schenec- 
tady, N.Y. For introduction, 25 cents. 

Stories from English History. — By Albert F. Blaisdell. For 

introduction, 40 cents. 
Under Six Flags. — By M. E. M. Davis. For introduction, cloth, 50 

cents ; boards, 40 cents. 



GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 

Boston. New York. Chicago. Atlanta. Dallas. 



THE STORY OF OUR CONTINENT 

a reading book on the geography of north america. 
By N. S. SHALER, 

Professor of Geology in Harvard University. 



i2mo. Cloth. 290 pages. Illustrated. For introduction, 75 cents. 



Those who read this book will at once perceive that both 
ill subject-matter and arrangement it departs widely from the 
ordinary text-books which give an account of North America. 
Its object is to set before the student a simple explanation of the 
way in which our continent has come to its present physical state, 
and at the same time to show how this physical state affects the 
life of the people. In other words, it seeks to secure a clear 
conception of the geography of our continent by showing, in a 
very simple manner, the geological evolution of its features. 

The end which the writer sought to attain is not one that 
may be secured by the ordinary school geographies. Such works 
undertake to afford the student a large body of detailed infor- 
mation concerning the actual state of the country, and with little 
or no reference to the steps by which the land came to its 
present estate. 

Professor Shaler's purpose has been to present only those 
features which can be shown in their relation to the geological 
development of the continent. This book is adapted to the needs 
of, grammar schools, and may be used to great advantage as a 
reader in connection with the regular text-book in geography. 
Used in this way, it will lead the student to perceive how the 
present state of the country is due to the processes which have 
gone on in the remote past, and in this way to attain to some of 
the most enlarging ideas which the geological history of the earth 
makes known. It will thus be found to possess a peculiar value as 
an introduction, by the way of our own continent, to the study of 
both geological and physical geography. 



GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 

Boston. New York. Chicago. Atlanta. Dallas. 



Reading Books on American History 



FOR SUPPLEMENTARY USE IN SCHOOLS. 



By NINA MOORE TIFFANY. 

Pilgrims and Puritans. The Story of the Planting of Plymouth and 
Boston. Sq. i6mo. Cloth. 197 pages. Illustrated. For intro- 
duction, 60 cents. 

From Colony to Commonwealth : Stories of the Revolutionary 
Days in Boston. Sq. i6nio. Cloth. 180 pages. Illustrated. 
Fo'- introduction, 60 cents. 

"Pilgrims and Puritans" is a book of easy reading, contain- 
ing sketches of the early days of Massachusetts — Massachusetts 
Indians, the Pilgrims of Plymouth, English Boston, William 
Blackstone, John Winthrop, Extracts from Wood's New Eng- 
land's Prospects ; with notes and appendix. 

It is intended for children who have not yet begun or are just 
beginning the study of United States history, and to supplement 
or prepare the way for the ordinary text-book. The book has 
been often used by children under ten years of age. It is provided 
with maps and illustrations. 

"From Colony to Commonwealth" is second in the series 
of which "Pilgrims and Puritans" is the first. These two little 
volumes are intended as an introduction to the study of United 
States historv in school or at home. 



Geo. H. Martin, S7eper7'isor of Schools, \ The Advance, Chicago: This little vol- 
Boston: I am delighted to find a child's ume, designed to be a kind of first lessons 
book of histor>' both accurate and interest- in American historj' for young readers, is 



ing. It was a happy thought of the author 
to incorporate so much of the original into 
the work. 

F. Treudley, Superintendent of 
Schools, Youjig^stoivn, Ohio: It is a very 
delightful little book, written in a very 
interesting manner, and one of the best 
I know of for children. 

Miss E. M. Reed, Principal of Train- 
ifig School, S f>r ing field, Mass.: It is 
charmingly written, and done in beautiful 
style. I consider it one of the most valu- 
able books of its class. 



admirably suited to its purpose. 

Evening Post, New York: Miss Nina 
Moore has, with no little dexterity, told in 
an attractive way, easily intelligible to 
children, "the story of the planting of 
Plymouth and Boston." She has drawn 
textually more or less upon the original 
authorities, and by means of plenty of 
maps, portraits, and views, has made the 
narrative impressive at every stage. 



GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 

Boston. New York. Chicago. Atlanta. Dallas. 



READING BOOKS ON GEOGRAPHY 



Ballou's Footprints of Travel ; or, Journeyings in Many Lands. 

By Maturin M. Ballou. 370 pages. Illustrated. For intro- 
duction, cloth, $1.00; boards, 70 cents. 

A SUPPLEMENTARY reading book in real geography, combining 
readings of the greatest interest ; information in geography and 
history ; help to make a dry study enjoyed ; and lessons in civili- 
zation and culture. 

The purpose of this work is to furnish a reader for use in the 
public schools which shall at once interest and instruct the pupil. 
The author depicts foreign countries and famous cities, describing 
land and ocean travel all over the world in a manner calculated to 
fix geographical and other facts upon the mind of the reader by 
their pleasant association with charming scenery, historic events, 
and vivid adventures. 

Hall's Our World Reader, No. I. By Mary L. Hall. Cloth. 

260 pages. With new maps and illustrations. For introduction, 

50 cents. 
This book has been thoroughly revised and issued in form and 
appearance as a reading book. It has stood for many years as 
the best elementary text-book of geography, and in this new and 
greatly improved edition deserves to meet still greater favor and 
adoption. 

Shaler's Story of Our Continent. A Reading Book on the 
Geography of North America. By N. S. Shaler, Professor of 
Geology in Harvard University. Cloth. 290 pages. Illustrated. 
For introduction, 75 cents. 

Frye's Broolcs and Brook Basins. First Steps in Geography — 
Nature Studies. By Alexis E. Frye. Cloth. 119 pages. Illus- 
trated. For introduction, 58 cents. 
This is a geographical reader and text-book for children, written 

expressly for the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades or years in schools. 

Frye's Child and Nature. Geography Teaching with Sand Model- 
ling. A manual for teachers. By Alexis E. Frye. Cloth. 
210 pages. Illustrated. For introduction, 80 cents. 
This is the best and almost the only book on sand modelling 
ever published. 

Frye's Teachers' Manual of Methods in Geography. By Alexis 
E. Frye. i2mo. Flexible cloth. 190 pages. Illustrated. For 
introduction, 50 cents. 

GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 

Boston. New York. Chicago. Atlanta. Dallas. 



MONTGOMERY'S AMERICAN HISTORY 

By I). H. MONTGOMERY, 

A uthor oj t/ie " Leading Facts of History Series!" 



Half leather. 367 pages. "With full maps, full-page illustrations, 
appendices, etc. For introduction, $1.00. 



The author of this book is Mr. D. H. Montgomery, the eminent 
and successful writer of historical text-books. 

Its general plan and style will be found similar to the other 
histories by this author. The main difference is that the American 
History is adapted for younger pupils. 

The greatest merit of the book is in the judgment with which 
the leading events in the development of our country have been 
selected and the vividness with which they are placed before the 
reader's mind. 

It has been written and not merely compiled. Hence it has 
an interest and charm like that of a story told by an eyewitness 
of the events. 

Not only are the important events clearly and luminously 
sketched, but their causes are fully traced and the results of all 
important events adequately shown. 

The author has treated all subjects impartially, following the 
course of events as an eyewitness elevated above the plane of 
contention. 

Accuracy has been diligently and patiently studied, and investi- 
gations of original documents have been made where leading 
authorities have been found to disagree. 

Every section ends with a brief summary. Copious notes are 
added, with many cross-references. The book contains an un- 
usually large number of maps besides numerous fine engravings 
carefully selected as historical illustrations. Chronological and 
statistical tables, a list of reference books, index, questions, the 
Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution have been 
added. 

Montgomery's Leading Facts of American History is full of 
thought and intellectual life. It has been pronounced by the 
educational jury the best text-book on the subject, — accurate, 
philosophical, unprejudiced, of rare interest, easily handled by 
teachers, and easily grasped by children. 



GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 

Boston. New York. Chicago. Atlanta. Dallas. 



The BEGINNER'S AMERICAN HISTORY 

By D. H. MONIGOMERY, 

Author of the "Leading- Facts of History Series" 



Cloth. 234 pages. Fully illustrated. For introduction, 60 cents. 



The author is Mr. Montgomery, the eminent and successful 
writer of historical text-books, whose books have stood the test of 
everyday use in thousands of schools in all parts of the country. 

This book is in no sense an abridgment of the author's 
"American History," but is entirely new and distinct, and 
arranged on a very different plan. 

All the main points are covered by interesting biographies. 
It is almost purely biographical, but care has been taken to make 
the stories cover, either directly or incidentally, all the main 
points of the history of our country. It comprises thirty biog- 
raphies, all in the compass of two hundred and twenty pages, 
followed by a list of reference books for teachers and a very full 
index. This makes prominent the biographical idea, and the 
principal history makers stand out prominently before the eye. 

The special aim of the book is to present those facts and 
principles in the lives of some of the great men of American 
history which will be of interest and value to boys and girls 
who are just beginning to be concerned about the history of 
their country. Great pains has been taken to relate only such 
incidents and anecdotes as are believed to rest on authorities 
beyond question. 

Montgomery's Beginner's American History has never failed 
to awaken the interest of wide-awake pupils ; to please earnest 
teachers; to maintain its position with school authorities; to 
retain its popularity in the schoolroom; to fascinate by its 
clear, direct style ; and to teach boys and girls the principles of 
true patriotism. 



GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 

Boston. New York. Chicago. Atlanta. Dallas. 



STAR=LAND 

Talks with Young People about the Wonders of the Heavens. 
By Sir ROBERT S. BALL, 

Royal Astronomer of Ireland. 



Cloth. 384 pages. Fully illustrated. For introduction, $1.00. 



This is a book of the rarest excellence. It combines the 
knowledge of a royal astronomer with the happy faculty of 
the story-teller. 

It is based upon two courses of Christmas lectures de- 
livered to children at the Royal Institution, Great Britain, 
and is something of rare quality, — lucid, fascinating, and 
yet thoroughly scientific. 

This fascinating book treats, in a manner equally true to 
science and attractive to children, all the chief topics of 
Astronomy : the sun, the moon, the planets, comets, meteors, 
and the stars. It is just the book that has been wanted for 
a long time, and is calculated not only to interest and in- 
struct, but to lead to greater effort, on the part of the 
learner, in the right direction. 



-is^ 



The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone: I have now finished reading 
your luminous and delightful Star-Land, and I am happy to be in a 
sense enrolled amongst your young pupils. 



GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 

Boston. New York. Chicago. Atlanta. Dallas. 



CLASSICS FOR CHILDREN 



Choice Literature; Judicious Notes; Large Type; 
Firm Binding; Low Prices. 



For the prices and bibliography of these books, 
see our High School and College Catalogue. 



Aesop's Fables. 

Andersen's Fairy Tales. First 

Series. 
Andersen's Fairy Tales. Second 

Series. 
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 
Burt's Stories from Plato. 
Chesterfield's Letters. 
Church's Stories of the Old 

World. 
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. 
Dickens' Tale of Two Cities. 
Cervantes' Don Quixote of La 

Mancha. 
Epictetus. 
Fiske-Irving's Washington and 

His Country. 
Francillon's Gods and Heroes. 
Franklin : His Life by Himself. 
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. 
Grimm's Fairy Tales, Part L 
Grimm's Fairy Tales, Part H. 
Grote and Segur's Two Great 

Retreats. 
Hale's Arabian Nights. 
Hatim Tai. 
Hudson and Lamb's Merchant of 

Venice. 
Hughes' Tom Brown at Rugby. 
Irving's Alhambra. 
Irving's Sketch-Book. (Six Selec- 
tions.) 



Johnson's Rasselas. 
Kingsley's Greek Heroes. 
Kingsley's Water Babies. 
Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses. 
Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare 
Marcus Aurelius. 
Martineau's Peasant and the 

Prince. 
Montgomery's Heroic Ballads. 
Plutarch's Lives. 
Ruskin's King of the Golden 

River. 
Selections from Ruskin. 
Scott's Guy Mannering, 

Ivanhoe. 

Lady of the Lake. 

Lay of the Last Minstrel. 

Marmion. 

Old Mortality. 

Quentin Durward. 

Rob Roy. 

Tales of a Grandfather. 

Talisman. 
South ey's Life of N .son. 
Swift's Gulliver's Travels. 
White's Natural History of 

Selborne. 
Williams and Foster's Selections 

for Memorizing. 
Wyss' Swiss Family Rol^inson. 



GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 

Boston. New York. Chicago. Atlanta. Dallas. 



1:,. (^Sii 



:;EH5; rSriEcflEcnr 



i:-rrit:;i; ;: 









£ : t ; t r c : 









Tz.ztztr.ir 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



: r r r r - t - r ; I J c 







014 497 716 6 






jnng 



1 


' 



1! 



